Never since old, old days of childhood, when she and Wolf and Rose had wiped the dishes and raked the yard, and walked a mile to the twenty-five-cent seatsat the circus, had Norma been so sure of herself, and so happy. She felt herself promoted, lifted above the old feelings and the old ways, and dedicated to the work before her. And one by one the shadows lifted, and the illusions blew away, and she could see her way clear for the first time in more than three years. It was all simple, all right, all just as she would have had it. She would never be a petted and wealthy little Leslie, she would never be a leader, like Mrs. von Behrens, and she would never stand before the world as the woman chosen by the incomparable Chris. Yet she was the last Melrose, and she knew now how she could prove herself the proudest of them all, how she could do these kinspeople of hers a greater favour than any they had ever dreamed of doing her. And in the richness of renouncing Norma knew herself to be for the first time truly rich.
Chris saw the difference in her next day, felt the new dignity, the sudden transition from girl to woman, but he had no inkling of its cause. Leslie saw it, and Annie, but Norma gave them no clue. At luncheon Annie, who had joined them for the meal, proposed that Leslie and Norma and the Liggetts come to her for a quiet family dinner, but Norma begged off; she really must see Aunt Kate, and would seize this opportunity to go home for a night. But leaving the table Norma asked Chris if she might talk business to him for a few minutes.
They sat in the old library, Chris sunk in a great leather chair, smoking cigarettes, Norma opposite, her white hands clasped on the blackness of her simple gown, and her eyes moving occasionally from their quiet study of the fire to rest on Chris's face.
"Chris," she said, "I've thought this all out, now, and I'm not really asking your advice, I'm telling you what I am going to do! I'm going to California with Wolf in a week or two—that's the first thing!"
He stared at her blankly, and as the minutes of silence between them lengthened Norma noticed his lips compress themselves into a thin, colourless line. But she returned his look bravely, and in her eyes there was something that told the man she was determined in her decision.
"I don't quite follow you, Norma," he said at last with difficulty. "You mean that all the plans and hopes we shared and discussed——" He faltered a moment and then made another effort: "Now that whatever obstacles there were have been removed, and you and I are free to fulfill our destinies, am I to understand that—that you are going back to your husband?"
"Exactly." The girl's answer was firm and determined.
The colour fled from Chris's face, and a cold light came into his eye; his jaw stiffened.
"You must use your own judgment, Norma," he answered, with a displeased shrug.
"I'll leave with you, or send you, my power of attorney," the girl went on, "and you and Hendrick as executors must do whatever you think right and just—just deposit the money in the bank!"
"I see," Chris said, noncommittally.
"And there's another thing," Norma went on, with heightened colour. "I don't want either Leslie or Aunt Annie ever to know—what you and I know!"
Chris looked at her, frowning slightly.
"That's impossible, of course," he said. "What are they going to think?"
"They'll think nothing," Norma said, confidently, but with anxious eyes fixed on his face, "because they'll know nothing. There'll be no change, nothing to make them suspect anything."
"But—great God! You don't seem to understand, Norma. Proofs of your birth, of your rightful heritage, your identity, the fact that you are Theodore's child, must be shown them, of course. You have inherited by Aunt Marianna's will the bulk of her personal fortune, but besides this, as Theodore's child, you inherit the Melrose estate, and Leslie must turn this all over to you, and make such restitution as she is able, of all income from it which she has received since Judge Lee and I turned it over to her on her eighteenth birthday."
"No, that's just what she isnotto do! I will get exactly what is mentioned in the will—as Norma Sheridan, bonds and the Melrose Building, and so on," Norma broke in, eagerly. "And that's enough, goodness knows, and a thousand times more than Wolf and I ever expected to have. Aunt Annie and Leslie are reconciled to that. But for the rest, I refuse to accept it. I don't want it. I've never been so unhappy in my life as I've been in this house, for all the money and the good times and the beautiful clothes. And if that much didn't make me happy, why should ten times more? Isn't it far, far better—all round——"
"You are talking absurdities," said Chris. "Do you think that Hendrick and I could consent to this? Do you suppose——"
"Hendrick doesn't know it, Chris. It is only you and I and Aunt Kate—that's all! And if I do this, andswear you and Aunt Kate to secrecy, who is responsible, except me?"
Chris shook his head. "Aunt Marianna wished you righted—wished you to take your place as Theodore's daughter. It is her wish, and it is only our duty——"
"But think a minute, Chris, think a minute," Norma said, eagerly, leaning forward in her chair, so that her locked hands almost touched his knees. "Wasit her wish? She wanted me toknow—that's certain! And I do know. But do you really think she wanted Leslie to be shamed and crushed, and to take away the money Leslie has had all her life, to shock Aunt Annie, and stir that old miserable matter up with Hendrick? Chris, youcan'tthink that! The one thing she would have wished and prayed would have been that somehow the matter would have been righted without hurting any one. Chris,thinkbefore you tear the whole family up by the roots. What harm is there in this way? I have plenty of money—and I go away. The others go on just as they always have, and in a little way—in just a hundredth part—I pay back dear old Aunt Marianna for all the worrying and planning she did, to make up to me for what should have been mine, and was Leslie's. Please—please, help me to do this, Chris. I can't be happy any other way. Aunt Kate will approve—you don't know how much she will approve, and it will repay her, too, just a little, to feel that it's all known now, and that it has turned out this way. And she will destroy every last line and shred of letters and papers, and the photographs she said she had, and it will all be over—for ever and for ever!"
"You put a terrible responsibility upon me," Chris said, slowly.
"No—I take it myself!" Norma answered. He had gotten to his feet, and was standing at the hearth, and now she rose, too, and looked eagerly up at him. "It isn't anything like the responsibility of facing the world with the whole horrible story!"
Chris was silent, thinking. Presently he turned upon her the old smile that she had always found irresistible, and put his two hands on her shoulders.
"You are a wonderful woman, Norma!" he said, slowly. "What woman in the world, but you, would do that? Yes, I'll do it—for Leslie's sake, and Acton's sake, and because I believe Alice would think it as wonderful in you as I do. But think," Chris said, "think just a few days, Norma. You and I—you and I might go a long way, my dear!"
If he had said it even at this hour yesterday, he might have shaken her, for the voice was the voice of the old Chris, and she had been even then puzzled and confused to see the wisest way. But now everything was changed; he could not reach her now, even when he put his arm about her, and said that this was one of their rare last chances to be alone together, and asked if it must be good-bye.
She looked up at him gravely and unashamedly.
"Yes, it must be good-bye—dear Chris!" she said, with a little emotion. "Although I hope we will see each other often, if ever Wolf and I come back. Engineers live in Canada and Panama and India and Alaska, you know, and we never will know we are coming until we get here! And I'm not going to try to thank you, Chris, for what you did for an ignorant, silly, strange little girl; you've been a big brother to me all these last years! And something more, of course,"Norma added, bravely, "and I won't say—I can't say—that if it hadn't been for Wolf, and all the changes this year—changes in me, too—I wouldn't have loved you all my life. But there's no place that you could take me, as Wolf Sheridan's divorced wife, that would seem worth while to me, when I got there—not if it was in the peerage!"
"There's just one thing that I want to say, too, Norma," Chris said, suddenly, when she had finished. "I'm not good enough for you; I know it. I see myself as I am, sometimes, I suppose. I think you're going to be happy—and God knows I hope so; perhaps itisa realer life, your husband's: and perhaps a man who works for his wife with his hands and his head has got something on us other fellows after all! I've often wished——But that doesn't matter now. But I want you to know I'll always remember you as the finest woman I ever knew—just the best there is! And if ever I've hurt you, forgive me, won't you, Norma?—and—and let me kiss you good-bye!"
She raised her face to his confidently, and her eyes were misty when she went upstairs, because she had seen that his were wet. But there was no more unhappiness; indeed an overwhelming sense that everything was right—that every life had shifted back into normal and manageable and infinitely better lines, went with her as she walked slowly out into the sunshine, and wandered in the general direction of Aunt Kate's. As she left the old Melrose home, the big limousine was standing at the door, and presently Annie and Leslie would sweep out in their flowing veils and crapes, and whirl off to the Von Behrens mansion. But Norma Sheridan was content to walk to the omnibus, and to take thejolting front seat, and to look down in all brotherly love and companionship at the moving and shifting crowds that were glorying in the warm spring weather.
To be busy—to be needed—to be loved—she said to herself. That was the sweet of life, and it could not be taken from the policeman at the crossing or the humblest little shop-girl who scampered under his big arm, or bought by the bored women in limousines who, furred and flowered and feathered, were moving from the matinée to the tea table. Caroline Craigie, Aunt Annie, Leslie; she had seen the material advantages of life fail them all.
Aunt Katewas out when Norma reached the apartment, but she knew that the key was always on the top of the door frame, and entered the familiar old rooms without any trouble. But she saw in a dismayed flash that Aunt Kate was not coming back, for that night at least. The kitchen window had been left four inches open, to accommodate the cat, milk and bones were laid in waiting, and a note in the bottle notified the milkman "no milk until to-morrow." There was also a note in pencil, on the bottom of an egg-box, for the nurses who rented two rooms, should either one of them chance to come in and be hungry, she was to eat "the pudding and the chicken stew, and get herself a good supper."
Norma, chuckling a little, got herself the good supper instead. It was with a delightful sense of solitude and irresponsibility that she sat eating it, at the only window in the flat that possessed a good view, the kitchen window. Aunt Kate, she decided, was with Rose, who had no telephone; Norma thought that she would wait until Aunt Kate got home the next day, rather than chance the long trip to the Oranges again. An alternative would have been to go to Aunt Annie's house, but somehow the thought of the big, silent handsome place, with the men in evening wear, Aunt Annie and Leslie in just the correct mourning décolleté, and the conversation decorously funereal, did not appeal to her. Instead it seemed a real adventure to dine alone, and after dinnerto put on a less conspicuous hat and coat, and slip out into the streets, and walk about in her new-found freedom.
The night was soft and balmy, and the sidewalks filled with sauntering groups enjoying the first delicious promise of summer as much as Norma did. The winter had been long and cold and snowy; great masses of thawing ice from far-away rivers were slowly drifting down the star-lighted surface of the Hudson, and the trees were still bare. But the air was warm, and the breezes lifted and stirred the tender darkness above her head with a summery sweetness.
Norma loved all the world to-night; the work-tired world that was revelling in idleness and fresh air. Romance seemed all about her, the doorways into which children reluctantly vanished, the gossiping women coming back from bakery or market, the candy stores flooded with light, and crowded with young people who were having the brightest and most thrilling moments of all their lives over banana specials and chocolate sundaes. The usual whirlpools eddied about the subway openings and moving-picture houses, the usual lovers locked arms, in the high rocking darkness of the omnibus tops, and looked down in apathetic indifference upon the disappointment of other lovers at the crossings. In the bright windows of dairy restaurants grapefruit were piled, and big baked apples ranged in saucers, and beyond there were hungry men leaning far over the table while they discussed doughnuts and strong coffee, and shook open evening papers.
She and Wolf had studied it all for years; it was sordid and crowded and cheap, perhaps, but it was honest and happy, too, and it was real. There was no affectationhere, even the premature spring hats, and the rouge, and the high heels were an ingenuous bid for just a little notice, just a little admiration, just a little longer youth.
Sauntering along in the very heart of it, hearing the flirtation, the theatrical chatter, the homely gossip about her, Norma knew that she was at home. Leslie, perhaps, might have loathed it had she been put down in the midst of it; to Aunt Annie it would always seem entirely beneath even contempt. But Norma realized to-night, as she slipped into church for a few minutes, as she dropped a coin into a beggar's tin cup, as she entered into casual conversation with the angry mother of a defiant boy, that this, to her, was life. It was life—to work, to plan, to marry and bear children, to wrest her own home from unfavourable conditions, and help her own man to win. She would live, because she would care—care deeply how Wolf fared in his work, how her house prospered, how her children developed. She would not be Aunt Annie's sort of woman—Chris's sort—she would be herself, judged not by what she had, but by what she could do—what she could give.
"And that's the kind of woman I am, after all," she said to herself, rejoicingly. "The child of a French maid and a spoiled, rich young man! But no, I'm not their child. I'm Aunt Kate's—just as much as Rose and Wolf are——!" And at the thought of Wolf she smiled. "Won't Wolf Sheridanopen his eyes?"
When she reached Forty-first Street she turned east, and went past the familiar door of the opera house. It was a special performance, and the waiting line stretched from the box office down the street, and around the corner, into the dark. They would only be able to buystanding room, these patient happy music lovers who grew weary and cold waiting for their treat, and even standing, they would be behind an immovable crowd, they would catch only occasional glimpses of the stage. But Norma told herself that she would rather be in that line, than yawningly deciding, as she had so often seen Annie decide, that she would perhaps rustle into the box at ten o'clock for the third act—although it was rather a bore.
She flitted near enough to see the general stir, and to see once more the sign "No Footmen Allowed in This Lobby," and then, smiling at the old memories, she slipped away into the darkness, drinking in insatiably the intimate friendliness of the big city and the spring night.
It wasten o'clock the next day, a silent gray day, when Aunt Kate let herself into the apartment, and "let out," to use her own phrase, a startled exclamation at finding her young daughter-in-law deeply asleep in her bed. Norma, a vision of cloudy dark tumbled hair and beautiful sleepy blue eyes, half-strangled the older woman in a rapturous embrace, and explained that she had come home the night before, and eaten the chicken stew, and perhaps overslept—at any rate would love some coffee.
Something faintly shadowed in her aunt's welcome, however, was immediately apparent, and Norma asked, with a trace of anxiety, if Rose's babies were well. For answer her aunt merely asked if Wolf had telephoned.
"Wolf!" said Wolf's wife. "Is he home?"
"My dear," Mrs. Sheridan said. "He's going—he's gone!—to California!"
Norma did not move. But the colour went out of her face, and the brightness from her eyes.
"Gone!" she whispered.
"Well—he goes to-day! At six o'clock——"
"At six o'clock!" Norma leaped from her bed, stood with clenched hands and wild eyes, thinking, in the middle of the floor. "It's twenty-two minutes past ten," she breathed. "Where does he leave?"
"Rose and I were to see him at the Grand Central at quarter past five," his mother began, catching the contagious excitement. "But, darling, I don't know where you can get him before that!—Here, let me do that," she added, for Norma had dashed into the kitchen, and was measuring coffee recklessly. A brown stream trickled to the floor.
"Oh, Lord—Lord—help me to get hold of him somewhere!" she heard Norma breathe. "And you weren't going to let me know—but it's my fault," she said, putting her hands over her face, and rocking to and fro in desperate suspense. "Oh, how can I get him?—I must! Oh, Aunt Kate—help me! Oh, I'm not even dressed—and that clock says half-past ten! Aunt Kate, will you help me!"
"Norma, my darling," her aunt said, arresting the whirling little figure with a big arm, and looking down at her with all the love and sadness of her great heart in her face, "why do you want to see him, dear? He told me—he had to tell his mother, poor boy, for his heart is broken—that you were not going with him!"
"Oh, but Aunt Kate—he'll have to wait for me!" Norma said, stamping a slippered foot, and beginning to cry with hurt and helplessness. "Oh, won't you help me? You always help me! Don't—don't mind what I said to Wolf; you know how silly I am! But please—please——"
"But, Baby—you're sure?" Mrs. Sheridan asked, feeling as if ice that had been packed about her heart for days was breaking and stirring, and as if the exquisite pain of it would kill her. "Don't—hurt him again, Norma!"
"But he's going off—without me," Norma wailed, rushing to the bathroom, and pinning her magnificent mass of soft dark hair into a stern knob for her bath. "Aunt Kate, I've always loved Wolf, always!" she said,passionately. "And if he really had gone away without me I think it would have broken my heart! Youknowhow I love him! We'll catch him somewhere, I know we will! We'll telephone—or else Harry——"
She trailed into the kitchen half-dressed, ten minutes later.
"I've telephoned for a taxi, Aunt Kate, and we'll find him somewhere," she said, gulping hot coffee appreciatively. "I must—I've something to tell him. But I'll have to tell you everything in the cab. To begin with—it's all over. I'm done with the Melroses. I appreciate all they did for me, and I appreciate your worrying and planning about that old secret. But I've made up my mind. Whatever you have of letters, and papers and proofs, I want you please to do the family a last favour by burning—every last shred. I've told Chris, I won't touch a cent of the money, except what Aunt Marianna left me; and I never, never, never intend to say one more word on the subject! Thousands didn't make me happy, so why should a million? The best thing my father ever did for me was to give my mother a chance to bring me here to you!"
She had gotten into her aunt's lap as she spoke, and was rubbing her cheek against the older, roughened cheek, and punctuating her conversation with little kisses. Mrs. Sheridan looked at her, and blinked, and seemed to find nothing to say.
"Perhaps some day when it's hot—and the jelly doesn't jell—and the children break the fence," pursued Norma, "I will be sorry! I haven't much sense, and I may feel that I've been a fool. But then I just want you to remind me of Leslie—and the Craigies—or better, of what a beast I am myself in that atmosphere! Soit's all over, Aunt Kate, and if Wolf will forgive me—and he always does——"
"He's bitterly hurt this time, Nono," said her aunt, gently.
Norma looked a little anxious.
"I wrote him in Philadelphia," she said, "but he won't get that letter. Oh, Aunt Kate—if we don't find him! But we will—if I have to walk up to him in the station the last minute—and stop him——"
"Ah, Norma, you love him!" his mother said, in a great burst of thankfulness. "And may God be thanked for all His goodness! That's all I care about—that you love him, and that you two will be together again. We'll get hold of him, dear, somehow——!"
"But, my darling," she added, coming presently to the bedroom door to see the dashing little feathered hat go on, and the dotted veil pinned with exquisite nicety over Norma's glowing face, and the belted brown coat and loose brown fur rapidly assumed, "you're not wearing your mourning!"
"Not to-day," Norma said, abstractedly. And aloud she read a list:
"Bank; Grand Central; drawing-room; new suit-case; notary for power of attorney; Kitty Barry; telephone Chris, Leslie, Annie; telephone Regina about trunks. Can we be back here at say—four, Aunt Kate?"
"But what's all that for?" her aunt asked, dazedly.
Norma looked at a check book; put it in her coat pocket. Then as her aunt's question reached her preoccupied mind, she turned toward her with a puzzled expression.
"Why, Aunt Kate—you don't seem to understand; I'm going with Wolf to California this evening."
It wasexactly nineteen minutes past five o'clock when Wolf Sheridan walked into the Grand Central Station that afternoon. He had stopped outside to send his wife some flowers, and just a brief line of farewell, and he was thinking so hard of Norma that it seemed natural that the woman who was coming toward him, in the great central concourse, should suggest her. The woman was pretty, too, and wore the sort of dashing little hat that Norma often wore, and there was something so familiar about the belted brown coat and the soft brown furs that Wolf's heart gave a great plunge, and began to ache—ache—ache—hopelessly again.
The brown coat came nearer—and nearer. And then he saw that the wearer was indeed his wife. She had dewy violets in her belt, and her violet eyes were dewy, too, and her face paled suddenly as she put her hand on his arm.
What Norma all that tired and panicky afternoon had planned to say to Wolf on this occasion was something like this:
"Wolf, if you ever loved me, and if I ever did anything that made you happy, and if all these years when I have been your little sister, and your chum, and your wife, mean anything to you—don't push me away now! I am sorrier for my foolishness, and more ashamed of it, than you can possibly be! I think it was never anything but weakness and vanity that made me want to flirt with Chris Liggett. I think that if he had once stopped flattering me, and if ever our meetings had been anything but stolen fruit, as it were, I would have seen how utterly blind I was! I'm different now, Wolf; I know that what I felt for him was only shallow vanity, and that what I feel for you is the deepest and realest love that any woman ever knew! There's nothing—no minute of the day or night when I don't need you. There's nothing that you think that isn't what I think! I want to go West with you, and make a home there, and when you go to China, or go to India, I want you to go because your wife has helped you—because you have had happy years of working and experimenting and picnicking and planning—with me!
"It's all over, Wolf, that Melrose business—that dream! I've said good-bye to them, and they have to me, and they know I'm never coming back! I'm a Sheridan now—really and truly—for ever."
And in the lonesome and bitter days in which his great dream had come true, without Norma to share it, days in which he had been thinking of her as affiliated more and more with the element he despised, identified more and more with the man who had wrecked—or tried to wreck—her life, Wolf had imagined this meeting, and imagined her as tentatively holding out the olive branch of peace; and he had had time to formulate exactly what he should answer to such an appeal.
"I'm sorry, Norma," he had imagined himself saying. "I'm terribly sorry! But just talking doesn't undo these things, justsayingthat you didn't mean it, and that it's all over. No, married life can't be picked up and put down again like a coat. Youweremy wife,and God knows I worshipped you—heart and soul! If some day these people get tired of you, or you get tired of them, that'll be different! But you've cut me too deep—you've killed a part of me, and it won't come alive again! I've been through hell—wondering what you were doing, what you were going to do! I never should have married you; now let's call it all quits, and get out of it the best way we can!"
But when he saw her, the familiar, lovely face that he had loved for so many years, when he felt the little gloved hand on his arm, and realized that somehow, out of the utter desolation and loneliness of the big city, she had come to him again, that she was here, mistily smiling at him, and he could touch her and hear her voice, everything else vanished, as if it had never been, and he put his big arm about her hungrily, and kissed her, and they were both in tears.
"Oh, Wolf——!" Norma faltered, the dry spaces of her soul flooding with springtime warmth and greenness, and a great happiness sweeping away all consciousness of the place in which they stood, and the interested eyes about them. "Oh, Wolf——!" She thought that she added, "Would you have gone away without me!" but as a matter of fact words were not needed now.
"Nono—youdolove me?" he whispered. Or perhaps he only thought he enunciated the phrase, for although Norma answered, it was not audibly. Neither of them ever remembered anything coherent of that first five minutes, in which momentous questions were settled between Norma's admiring comment upon Wolf's new coat, and in which they laughed and cried and clung together in shameless indifference to the general public.
But presently they were calm enough to talk, andWolf's first constructive remark, not even now very steady or clear, was that he must put off his going, get hold of Voorhies somehow——
But no, Norma said, even while they were dashing toward the telegraph office. She had already bought her ticket; she was going, too—to-night—this very hour——!
Wolf brought her up short, ecstatic bewilderment in his face.
"But your trunks——?"
"Regina—I tell you it's all settled—Regina sends them on after me. And I've got a new big suit-case, and my old brown one, that's plenty for the present! They're checked here, in the parcel-room——"
"But we'll——" They had started automatically to rush toward the parcel-room, but now he brought her up short again. "It's five-thirty now," he muttered, turning briskly in still another direction, "let me have your ticket, we'll have to try for a section—it's pretty late, but there may be cancellations!"
"Oh, but see, Wolf——! I've been here since half-past four. I've got the A drawing-room in Car 131——" She brought forth an official-looking envelope, and flashed a flimsy bit of coloured paper. For a third time Wolf checked his hurried rushing, and they both broke into delicious laughter. "I've been at it all day, with Aunt Kate," Norma said, proudly. "I've been to banks and to Judge Lee's office, and I've seen Annie and Leslie, and I bought a new wrapper and a suit-case, and—oh, and I saw Kitty Barry, and I got you a book for the train, and I got myself one——"
"Oh, Norma," Wolf said, his eyes filling, "you God-blessèd little adorable idiot, do you know howI love you? My darling—my own wife, do you know that I want to die, to-night, I'm so happy! Do you realize what it's going to mean to us, poking about Chicago, and sending home little presents to Rose and the kids, and reaching San Francisco, and going up to the big mine? Do you realize that I feel like a man out of jail—like a kid who knows it's Saturday morning?"
"Well—I feel that way, too!" Norma smiled. "And now," she added, in a businesslike tone, "we've got to look for Aunt Kate and Rose, and get our bags; and Leslie said to-day that it was a good idea to wire a Chicago hotel for a room, just for the few hours before the Overland pulls out, because one feels so dirty and tired; do you realize that I've never spent a night on a Pullman yet?"
"And I'll turn in the ticket for my lower," Wolf said; "we'll have dinner on board, so that's all right——"
"Oh, Wolf, and won't that be fun?" Norma exulted. And then, joyously: "Oh, there they are!"
And she fled across the great space to meet Rose, pretty and matronly, at the foot of the great stairway, and Harry grinning and proud, with his little sturdy white-caped boy in his arms, and Aunt Kate beaming utter happiness upon them all. And then ensued that thrilling time of incoherencies and confusions, laughter and tears, to which the big place is, by nature, dedicated. They were parting so lightly, but they all knew that there would be changes before they six met again. To Aunt Kate, holding close the child whose destinies had been so strangely entangled with her own, the moment held a poignant pleasure as well as pain. She was launched now, their imperious, beloved youngest; she had been taken to the mountain-tops, and shown the world at her feet, and she had chosen bravely and wisely, chosen her part of service and simplicity and love. Life would go on, changes indeed and growth everywhere, but she knew that the years would bring her back a new Norma—a developed, sweetened, self-reliant woman—and a new Wolf, his hard childhood all swept away and forgotten in the richness and beauty of this woman's love and companionship. And she was content.
"And, Wolf—she told you about Kitty! Every month, as long as they need it," Rose said, crying heartily, as she clung to her brother. "Why, it's the most wonderful thing I ever heard! Poor Louis Barry can't believe it—he broke down completely! And Kitty was crying, and kissing the children, and she knelt down, and put her arms about Norma's knees; and Norma was crying, too—you never saw anything like it!"
"She never told me a word about it," Wolf said, trying to laugh, and blinking, as he looked at her, a few feet away. One of her arms was about his mother, her hand was in Harry's, her face close to the rosy baby's face.
"Wolf," his sister said, earnestly, drying her eyes, "it will bring a blessing on your own children——!"
"Ah, Rose!" he answered, quickly. "Pray that there is one, some day—one of our own as sweet as yours are!"
"Ah, you'll have everything, you two, never fear!" she said, radiantly. And then a gate opened, and the bustle about them thickened, and laughing faces grew pale, and last words faltered.
Harry gave Rose the baby, and put his arm aboutRose's mother, and they watched them go, the red-cap leading with the suit-cases, Wolf carrying another, Norma on his arm, twisting herself about, at the very last second, to smile an April smile over her shoulder, and wave the green jade handle of her slim little umbrella. There was just a glimpse of Wolf's old boyish, proud, protecting smile, and then his head drooped toward his companion, and the surging crowd shut them out of sight.
Then Rose immediately was concerned for the little baby. Wouldn't it be wiser to go straight home, just for fear that Mrs. Noon might have fallen asleep—and the house caught on fire——? Mrs. Sheridan blew her nose and dried her eyes, and straightened her widow's bonnet, and cleared her throat, and agreed that it would. And they all went away.
But there was another watcher who had shared, unseen, all this last half-hour, and who stood immovable to the last second, until the iron gates had actually clashed shut. It was a well-built, keen-eyed man, in an irreproachably fitting fur-collared overcoat, who finally turned away, fitting his eyeglasses, on their black ribbon, firmly upon the bridge of his nose, and sighing just a little as he went back to the sidewalk, and climbed into a waiting roadster.
Even after he took his seat at the wheel, he made no effort to start the car, but sat slowly drawing on his heavy gloves, and staring abstractedly at the dull, uninteresting stretch of street before him, where a dismal spring wind was stirring chaff and papers about the subway entrance, and surface cars were grinding and ringing on the curve.
It looked dull and empty—dull and empty, hethought. She had been very happy, looking up at her man, kissing her people good-bye. She was a remarkable woman, Norma.
"A remarkable woman—Norma," he said, half-aloud. "She will make him a wonderful wife; she will help him to go a long way. And she never would have had patience for formal living; it wasn't in her!"
But he remembered what was in her, what eager gaiety, what hunger for new impressions, what courage in seizing her dilemmas the instant she saw them. He remembered the flash of her eyes, and the curve of her proud little mouth.
"Theodore had more charm than any of them," he said, "and she is like him. Well—perhaps I'll meet somebody like her, some day, and the story will have a different ending!"
But he knew in his heart that there was nobody like her, and that she had gone out of his life for ever.
They had hung the belted brown coat over the big new gray one in the drawing-room, and Norma had brushed her hair, and Wolf had shoved the suit-cases under the seats, and they had gone straight into the dining-car, and were at a lighted little shining table by this time. Wolf had had no lunch; Norma was, she said, starving. They ordered their meal just as the train drew out of the underground arcades and swept over the city, in the twilight of the dull, sunless day.
Norma looked down, and joy and a vague heartache struggled within her. The little city blocks, draped with their frail tangles of fire-escapes, were as clean-cut as toys. In the streets children were screaming andracing, at the doorways women loitered and talked. Great trucks lumbered in and out among surging pedestrians, and women and children stood before the green-grocers' displays of oranges and cabbages, and trickled in and out of the markets, where cheap cuts were advertised in great chalk signs on the windows. Red brick, yellow brick, gray cement, the streets fled by; the dear, familiar streets that she and Wolf, and she and Rose, had tramped and explored, in the burning dry heat of July, in the flutter of November's first snows.
"Say good-bye to it, Wolf; it will be a long time before we see New York again!"
Wolf looked down, grinning. Then, as they left the city, and the dusk deepened, his eyes went toward the river, went toward the vague and waiting West. The Palisades lay, a wide bar of soft dull gray, against the paler dove-colour of the sky. Above them, bare trees were etched sharply, and beneath them was the satiny surface of the full Hudson.
It was still water, and the river was smooth enough to give back a clear reflection of the buildings and the wharves on the opposite shore, and the floating ice from the north looked like rounded bunches of foam arrested on the shining waters.
Suddenly the sinking sun evaded the smother of cloud, and flashed out red and shining, for only a few brilliant minutes. It caught window glass like flame, twinkled and smouldered in the mirror of the river, and lighted the under edges of low clouds with a crisp touch of apricot and pink. Wet streets shone joyously, doves rose in a circling whirl from a near-by roof, and all the world shone and sparkled in the last breath ofthe spring day. Then dusk came indeed, and the villages across the river were strung with increasing lights, and in the tender opal softness of the evening sky Norma saw a great star hanging.
"That's a good omen—that's our own little star!" she said softly to herself. She looked up to see Wolf smiling at her, and the smile in her own eyes deepened, and she stretched a warm and comradely hand to him across the little table.
THE END
Transcriber's NoteTable of Contents added by the transcriber.Hyphenation standardized.Archaic and variable spelling was preserved as printed.Missing quotation marks were added to standardize usage. Otherwise, the editor's punctuation style was preserved.
Transcriber's Note
Table of Contents added by the transcriber.Hyphenation standardized.Archaic and variable spelling was preserved as printed.Missing quotation marks were added to standardize usage. Otherwise, the editor's punctuation style was preserved.