"Did you make that cake, darling?"

"Indeed I did; she can't make cake!"

"And the ham?"

"Well"—Norma eyed the cut ham fondly—"we did that together, out of the book! And I wish you'd taste it, Aunt Kate, it is perfectly delicious. I give it to Wolf every other night, but I think he'd eat it three times a day and be delighted. And last week we made bread—awfully good, too—not hard like that bread we made last summer. Rolls, we made—cinnamon rolls and plain. Harry and Rose were here. And Thanksgiving I'm going to try mincemeat."

"You're a born cook," Aunt Kate said, paying one of her highest compliments with due gravity. But Norma did not respond with her usual buoyancy. She sighed impatiently, and her face fell into lines of discontent and sadness that did not escape the watching eyes. Mrs. Sheridan changed the subject to the one of a cousin of Harry Redding, one Mrs. Barry with whose problems Norma was already dismally familiar. Mrs. Barry's husband was sick in a hospital, and she herself had to have an expensive operation, and the smallest of the four children had some trouble hideously like infantile paralysis.

Norma knew that Aunt Kate would have liked to have her offer to take at least one of the small and troublesome children for two or three days, if not to stay with the unfortunate Kitty Barry outright. She knew that there was almost no money, that all the household details of washing and cooking were piling up like a mountain about the ailing woman, but her heart was filled with sudden rebellion and impatience with the whole miserable scheme.

"My goodness, Aunt Kate, if it isn't one thing with those people it's another!" she said, impatiently. "I suppose you were there, and up with that baby all night!"

"Indeed I got some fine sleep," Mrs. Sheridan answered, innocently. "Poor things, they're very brave!"

Norma said nothing, but her expression was not sympathetic. She had been thinking of herself as to be pitied, and this ruthless introduction of the Barry question entirely upset the argument. If Mary Bishop and Katrina Thayer were the standard, then Norma Sheridan's life was too utterly obscure and insignificant to be worth living. But of course if incompetent strugglers like the Barrys were to be brought into the question, then Norma might begin to feel the solid ground melting from beneath her feet.

She did not offer the cake or the ham to Aunt Kate, as contributions toward the small Barrys' lunch next day, nor did she invite any one of them to visit her. Her aunt, if she noted these omissions, made no comment upon them.

"I declare you are getting to be a real woman, Norma," she said.

"I suppose everyone grows up," Norma assented, cheerlessly.

"Yes, there's a time when a child stops being a baby and you see that it's beginning to be a little girl," Mrs. Sheridan mused; "but it's some time later before you know what sort of a little girl it is. And then at—say fifteen or sixteen—you see the change again, the little girl growing into a grown girl—a young lady. And for awhile you sort of lose track of her again, until all of a sudden you say: 'Well, Norma's going to be sociable—and like people!' or: 'Rose is going to be a gentle, shy girl——'"

Norma knew the mildly moralizing tone, and that she was getting a sermon.

"You never knew that I was going to be a good housekeeper!" she asserted, inclined toward contrariety.

"I think you're going through another change now, Baby," her aunt said. "You've become a woman too fast. You don't quite know where you are!"

This was so unexpectedly acute that Norma was inwardly surprised, and a little impressed. She sat down at one end of the clean little kitchen table, and rested her face in her hands, and looked resentfully at the older woman.

"Then you don't think I'm a good housekeeper," she said, looking hurt.

"I think you will be whatever you want to be, Norma, it'll all be in your hands now," Mrs. Sheridan answered, seriously. "You're a woman, now; you're Wolf's wife; you've reached an age when you can choose and decide for yourself. You can be—you always could be—the best child the Lord ever made, or you can fret and brood over what you haven't got."

The shrewd kindly eye seemed looking into Norma's very soul. The girl dropped her hard bright stare, and looked sulky.

"I don't see what I'm doing!" she muttered. "I can't help wanting—what other people that are no better than I, have!"

"Yes, but haven't you enough, Norma? Think of women like poor Kitty Barry——"

"Oh, Kitty Barry—Kitty Barry!" Norma burst out, angrily. "It isn't my fault that Kitty Barry has trouble; I had nothing to do with it! Look at people like Leslie—what she wastes on one new fur coat would keep the Barrys for a year! Eighty-two hundred dollars she paid for her birthday coat! And that's nothing! Katrina Thayer——"

"Norma—Norma—Norma!" her aunt interrupted, reproachfully. "What have you to do with girls like the Thayer girl? Why, there aren't twenty girls in the country as rich as that. That doesn't affect you, if there's something you can do for the poor and unfortunate——"

"It does affect me! I can't"—Norma dropped her tone, and glanced at her aunt. She knew that she was misbehaving—"I can't help inheriting a love for money," she said, breathing hard. "I know perfectly well who I am—who my mother is," she ended, with a half-defiant and half-fearful sob in her voice.

"How do you mean that you know about your mother, Norma?" Mrs. Sheridan demanded, sharply.

"Well"—Norma had calmed a little, and she was a trifle nervous—"Chris told me; and Aunt Alice knows, too—that Aunt Annie is my mother," she said.

"Chris Liggett told you that?" Mrs. Sheridan asked, with a note of incredulity in her voice.

"Yes. Aunt Alice guessed it almost as soon as I went to live there! And I've known it for over a year," Norma said.

"And who told Chris?"

"Well—Aunt Marianna, I suppose!"

There was silence for a moment.

"Norma," said Mrs. Sheridan, in a quiet, convincing tone that cooled the girl's hot blood instantly, "Chris is entirely wrong; your mother is dead. I've never lied to you, and I give you my word! I don't know where Miss Alice got that idea, but it's like her romantic way of fancying things! No, dear," she went on, sympathetically, as Norma sat silent, half-stunned by painful surprise, "you have no claim on Miss Annie. Both your father and mother are dead, Norma; I knew them both. There was a reason," Mrs. Sheridan added, thoughtfully, "why I felt that Mrs. Melrose might want to be kind to you—want to undo an injustice she did years ago. But I've told myself a thousand times that I did you a cruel wrong when I first let you go among them—you who were always so sensible, and so cheerful, and who would always take things as they came, and make no fuss!"

"Oh, Aunt Kate," Norma stammered, bitterly, her lip trembling, and her voice fighting tears, "you don't have to tell me that in your opinion I've changed for the worse—I see it in the way you look at me! You've always thought Rose was an angel—too good to live!—and that I was spoiled and lazy and good-for-nothing; you were glad enough to get rid of me, and now I hope you're satisfied! They've told me one thing, and you've told me another—and I guess the truth is that I don't belong to anybody; and I wish I was dead, where my f-f-father and m-m-mother are——!"

And stumbling into incoherence and tears, Norma dropped her head on her arm, and sobbed bitterly. Mrs. Sheridan's face was full of pain, but she did not soften.

"You belong to your husband, Norma!" she said, mildly.

Norma sat up, and wiped her eyes on a little handkerchief that she took from the pocket of her housewifely blue apron. She did not meet her aunt's eye, and still looked angry and hurt.

"Well—who am I then? Haven't I got some right to know who my mother and father were?" she demanded.

"That you will never hear from me," Mrs. Sheridan replied, firmly.

"But, Aunt Kate——"

"I gave my solemn promise, Norma, and I've kept my word all these years; I'm not likely to break it now."

"But—won't I ever know?"

Mrs. Sheridan shrugged her broad shoulders and frowned slightly.

"That I can't say, my dear," she said, gently. "Some day I may be released from my bond, and then I'll be glad to tell you everything."

"Perhaps Wolf will tell me he's nothing to me, now!" the girl continued, with childish temper.

"Wolf—and all of us—think that there's nobody like you," the older woman said, tenderly. But Norma did not brighten. She went in a businesslike way to the stove, and glanced at the various bowls and saucepans in which dinner was baking and boiling, then sliced some stale bread neatly, put the shaved crusts in a special jar, and began to toast the slices with a charming precision.

"Change your mind and stay with us, Aunt Kate?" she said, lifelessly.

"No, dear, I'm going!" And Aunt Kate really did bundle herself into coat and rubber overshoes and woolly scarf again. "November's coming in with a storm," she predicted, glancing out at the darkness, where the wind was rushing and howling drearily.

Norma did not answer. No mere rushing of clouds and whirl of dry and colourless leaves could match the storm of disappointment that was beginning to rage in her own heart.

Yet she felt a pang of repentance, when cheerful Aunt Kate had tramped off in the dark, to Rose's house, which was five blocks away, and perhaps afterward to the desolate Barrys', and wished that she had put her arms about the big square shoulders, and her cheek against her aunt's cheek, and said that she was sorry to be unreasonable.

Rushing to another extreme of unreason, she decided that she and Wolf must go see Rose to-night—and perhaps the Barrys, too—and cheer and solace them all. And Norma indulged in a little dream of herself nursing and cooking in the Barrys' six little cluttered rooms, and earning golden opinions from all the group. There was money, too; she had not used all of October's allowance, and to-morrow would find another big check at the bank.

Wolf interrupted by coming in so tired he could hardly move. He ate his dinner, yawned amiably in the kitchen while she cleared it away, and was so sound asleep at nine o'clock that Norma's bedside light and the rustling of the pages of her book, three feet away from his face, had no more effect upon him than if the three feet had been three hundred.

And then the bitter mood came back to her again; the bored, restless, impatient feeling that her life was a stupid affair. And deep in her heart the sense of hurt and humiliation grew and spread; the thought that she was not of the charmed circle of the Melroses, not secretly and romantically akin to them, she was merely the casual object of the old lady's fantastic sense of obligation. Aunt Kate, who had never said what was untrue—who, Norma and her children firmly believed, could not say what was untrue—had taken away, once and for all, the veil of mystery and romance that had wrapped Norma for three exciting years.

For Leslie, and Katrina, and Mary Bishop, perhaps, travel and the thrill of foreign shores or European courts. But for Wolf Sheridan's wife, this small, orderly, charming house on the edge of the New Jersey woods, and the laundry to think of every Monday, and the two-days' ordering to remember every Saturday, as long as the world went round!

For a few days Norma really suffered in spirit, then the natural healthy current of her life reestablished itself, and she philosophically determined to make the best of the matter. If she was not Aunt Annie's daughter and Leslie's cousin, she was at least their friend. They—even unsuspecting of any strange relationship—had always been kind to her. And Aunt Marianna and Aunt Alice had been definitely affectionate, to say nothing of Chris!

So one day, when she happened to be shopping in the winter briskness of the packed and brilliant Avenue, she telephoned Leslie at about the luncheon hour. Leslie when last they met had said that she would confidently expect Norma to run out and lunch with her some day—any day.

"Who is it?" Leslie's voice asked, irritably, when at last the telephone connection was established. "Oh, Norma! Oh——? What is it?"

"Just wondering how you all were, and what the family news is," Norma said, with an uncomfortable inclination to falter.

"I don't hear you!" Leslie protested, impatiently. The insignificant inquiry did not seem to gain much by repetition, and Norma's cheeks burned in shame when Leslie followed it by a blank little pause. "Oh—everyone's fine. The baby wasn't well, but she's all right now."

Another slight pause, then Norma said:

"She must be adorable—I'd like to see her."

"She's not here now," Leslie answered, quickly.

"I've been shopping," Norma said. "Any chance that you could come down town and lunch with me?"

"No, I really couldn't, to-day!" Leslie answered, lightly and promptly.

A moment later Norma said good-bye. She walked away from the telephone booth with her face burning, and her heart beating quickly with anger and resentment.

"Snob—snob—snob!" she said to herself, furiously, of Leslie. And of herself she presently added honestly, "And I wasn't much better, for I don't really like her any more than she does me!" And she stopped for flowers, and a little box of pastry, and went out to delight her Aunt Kate's heart with an unexpected visit.

But a sting remained, and Norma brooded over the injustice of life, as she went about her little house in the wintry sunlight, and listened to Wolf, and made much of Rose and the new baby girl. By Thanksgiving it seemed to her that she had only dreamed of "Aida" and of Newport, and that the Norma of the wonderful frocks and the wonderful dreams had been only a dream herself.



CHAPTER XXVIII

And then 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 so well," 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 for years!"

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 yet it'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 had no business to 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 nobody that 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 debutante luncheon, and were going to a debutante 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 she could 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 was drinking 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 for a 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've tried to 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 the swiftly 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.



CHAPTER XXIX

Despite their 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 matinee 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 spend with 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. After dinner 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 Alice isn't out 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 of the 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 Grimkes"; "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 wealth and 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.

"You are brave 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 leaving the 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 face was 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——"

"There may be!" Norma echoed, firing. "You know very well there isn't!"

"You see him every day," Wolf said.

"I don't see 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 been civil to me," rushed on Norma, beginning to feel tears mastering her, "if you'd been decent to 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. "You did tell 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 weaving their 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 a Post——"

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 own mistress 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.



CHAPTER XXX

So matters went 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—very ill. 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, I hope not!" 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 be gained 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 had been 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. The softened 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 knees again, 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. "Leslie and 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 get Annie'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 Mueller, 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 too shaken 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!"



CHAPTER XXXI

Mrs. Melrose never spoke again, or showed another flicker of the clear and normal intelligence that she had shown in the night. But she still breathed, and the long, wet day dragged slowly, in the big, mournful old house, until late in the unnatural afternoon. People—all sorts of people—were coming and going now, and being answered, or being turned away; a few privileged old friends came softly up the carpeted stairs, and cried quietly with Annie, who looked unbelievably old and ashen under the double shock. Norma began to hear, on all sides, respectful and sympathetic references to "the family." The family felt this, and would like that, the family was not seeing any one, the family must be protected and considered in every way. The privileged old friends talked with strange men in the lower hall, and were heard saying "I suppose so" dubiously, to questions of hats and veils and carriages and the church.

Chris was gone all day, but at four o'clock an urgent message was sent him, and he and Acton came into Mrs. Melrose's room about half an hour later, for the end. His face was ghastly, and he seemed almost unable to understand what was said to him, but he was very quiet.

Norma never forgot the scene. She knelt on one side of the bed, praying with all the concentration and fervour that she could rally under the circumstances. But her frightened, tired eyes were impressed with every detail of the dark old stately bedroom none the less. This was the end of the road, for youth and beauty and power and wealth, this sunken, unrecognizable face, this gathering of shadows among the dull, wintry shadows of the afternoon.

Annie was kneeling, too, her fine, unringed hands clasping one of her mother's hands. Chris sat against the back of the bed, half-supporting the piled pillows, in a futile attempt to make more easy the fighting breath, and Acton and Hendrick von Behrens, grave and awed, stood beside him, their faces full of sympathy and distress. There was an outer fringe of nurses, doctors, maids; there was even an audible whisper from one of them that caused Annie to frown, annoyed and rebuking, over her shoulder.

Minutes passed. Norma, pressing her cheek against the hand she held, began a Litany, very low. Suddenly the dying woman opened her eyes.

"Yes—yes—yes!" she whispered, eagerly, and with a break in her frightened voice Norma began more clearly, "Our Father, Who art in Heaven——" and they all joined in, somewhat awkwardly and uncertainly.

Mrs. Melrose sank back; she had raised herself just a fraction of an inch to speak. Now her head fell, and Norma saw the florid colour drain from her face as wine drains from an overturned glass. A leaden pallor settled suddenly upon her. When the prayer was finished they waited—eyed each other—waited again. There was no other breath.

"Doctor——" Annie cried, choking. The doctor gently laid down the limp hand he had raised; it was already cool. And behind him the maids began to sob and wail unrebuked.

Norma went out into the hall dazed and shaken. This was her first sight of death. It made her feel a little faint and sick. Chris came and talked to her for a few minutes; Annie had collapsed utterly, and was under the doctor's care; Acton broke down, too, and Norma heard Chris attempting to quiet him. There was audible sobbing all over the house when, an hour or two later, Alice's beautiful body in a magnificent casket was brought to lie in the old home beside the mother she had adored.

The fragrance of masses and masses of damp flowers began to penetrate everywhere, and Norma made occasional pilgrimages in to Annie's bedside, and told her what beautiful offerings were coming and coming and coming. Joseph had reinforcements of sympathetic, black-clad young men, who kept opening the front door, and murmuring at the muffled telephone. Annie's secretary, a young woman about Norma's age, was detailed by Hendrick to keep cards and messages straight—for every little courtesy must be acknowledged on Annie's black-bordered card within a few weeks' time—and Norma heard Joseph telephoning several of the prominent florists that Mr. Liggett had directed that all flowers were to come to the Melrose house. Nothing was overlooked.

When Norma went to her room, big boxes were on the bed, boxes that held everything that was simple and beautiful in mourning: plain, charming frocks, a smart long seal-bordered coat, veils and gloves, small and elegant hats, even black-bordered handkerchiefs. She dressed herself soberly, yet not without that mournful thrill that fitness and becomingness lends to bereavement. When she went back to Annie's side Annie was in beautiful lengths of lustreless crape, too; they settled down to low, sad conversation, with a few of the privileged old friends. Chris was nowhere to be seen, but at about six o'clock Acton came in to show them a telegram from Leslie, flying homeward. Judge Lee was hurrying to them from Washington, and for a few minutes Annie's handsome, bewildered little boys came in with a governess, and she cried over them, and clung to them forlornly.

After a distracted half-hour in the dining-room, when she and Acton and Annie's secretary had soup and salad from a sort of buffet meal that was going on there indefinitely, Norma went upstairs to find that the door to the front upper sitting-room, closed for hours, was set ajar, and to see a vague mass of beautiful flowers within—white and purple flowers, and wreaths of shining dark round leaves. With a quick-beating heart she stepped softly inside, and went to kneel at the nearer coffin, and cover her face with her shaking hands. The thick sweetness of the wet leaves and blossoms enveloped her. Candles were burning; there was no other light.

Two or three other women were in the room, catching their breath up through their nostrils with little gasps, pressing folded handkerchiefs against their trembling mouths, letting fresh tears well from their tear-reddened eyes. Chris was standing a few feet away from the white-clad, flower-circled, radiant sleeper who had been Alice; his arms were folded, his splendid dark gaze fell upon her with a sort of sombre calm; he seemed entirely unconscious of the pitying and sorrowful friends who were moving noiselessly to and fro.

In the candlelight there was a wavering smile on Alice's quiet face, her broad forehead was unruffled, and her mouth mysteriously sweet. Norma's eyes fell upon a familiar black coat, on the kneeling woman nearest her, and with a start she recognized Aunt Kate.

They left the room together a few minutes later, and Norma led her aunt to her own room, where they talked tenderly of the dead. The older woman was touched by the slender little black figure, and badly shaken by the double tragedy, and she cried quite openly. Norma had Regina send her up some tea, and petted and fussed about her in her little daughterly way.

"I saw about Miss Alice this morning, but I had no idea the poor old lady——!" Mrs. Sheridan commented sadly. "Well, well, it seems only yesterday that here, in this very house—and they were all young then——" Aunt Kate fell silent, and mused for a moment, before adding briskly: "But now, will they want you, Norma, after the funeral, I mean? Wolf wrote me——"

"I don't think Aunt Annie wants me now," Norma said, and with a heightened colour she added, suddenly, "But I belong here, now, Aunt Kate—I know who I am at last!"

Mrs. Sheridan's face did not move; but an indefinable tightness came about her mouth, and an indefinable sharpness to her eyes. She looked at Norma without speaking.

"Aunt Marianna told me," the girl said, simply. "You're sorry," she added, quickly, "I can see you are!"

"No—I wouldn't say that, Baby!" But Mrs. Sheridan spoke heavily, and ended on a sigh. There was a short silence.

Then Regina came in with a note for Norma, who read it, and turned to her aunt.

"It's Chris—he wants very much to see you before you go away," she said. "I wonder if you would ask Mr. Liggett to come in here, Regina?" But five minutes later, when Chris came in, he looked so ill that she was quick to spare him. "Chris, wouldn't to-morrow do—you look so tired!"

"I am tired," Chris said, after quietly accepting Mrs. Sheridan's murmured condolence, with his hand holding hers, as if he liked the big, sympathetic woman. "But I want this off my mind before I see Judge Lee! You are right, Mrs. Sheridan," he said, with a sort of boyish gruffness, not yet releasing her hands, "my wife was an angel. I always knew it—but I wish I could tell her so just once more!"

"Ah, that's the very hardest thing about death," Mrs. Sheridan said, sitting down, and quite frankly wiping from her eyes the tears that sympathy for his sorrow had made spring again. "We'd always want one more hour!"

"But Norma perhaps has told you——?" Chris said, in a different tone. "Told you of the—the remarkable talk we had yesterday—with my poor mother-in-law——"

Kate Sheridan nodded gravely.

"Yes," she answered, almost reluctantly, "Norma is Theodore Melrose's child. I have letters—all their letters. I knew her mother, that was Louison Courtot, well. It was a mixed-up business—but you've got the whole truth at last. I've lost more than one night's sleep over my share of it, Mr. Liggett, thinking who this child was, and whether I had the right to hold my tongue.

"I was a widow when I went to Germany with Mrs. Melrose. She begged and begged me to, for she was sick with worry about Miss Annie. Miss Annie had been over there about eight months, and something she'd written had made her mother feel that she was ill, or in trouble. Well, I didn't want to leave my own children, but she coaxed me so hard that I went. We sailed without cabling, and went straight to Leipsic, and to the dreadful, dreary pension that Miss Annie was in—a dismal, lonely place. She came downstairs to see her mother, and I'll never forget the scream she gave, for she'd had no warning, poor child, and Mueller had taken all her money, and she was—well, we could see how she was. She began laughing and crying, and her mother did, too, but Mrs. Melrose stopped after a few minutes, and we couldn't stop Miss Annie at all. She shrieked and sobbed and strangled until we saw she was ill, and her mother gave me one look, and bundled her right out to the carriage, and off to a better place, and we got a doctor and a nurse. But all that night she was in danger of her life. I went in to her room that evening, to put things in order, and she was lying on the bed like a dead thing—white, sick, and with her eyes never moving off her mother's face. I could hear her murmuring the whole story, the shame and the bitter cruelty of it, crying sometimes—and her mother crying, too.

"'And, Mama,' she said—the innocence of her! 'Mama, did the doctor tell you that there might have been a baby?—I didn't know it myself until a few weeks ago! And that's why they're so frightened about me now. But,' she said, beginning to cry again, 'I should have hated it—I've always hated it, and I'd rather have it all over—I don't want to have to face anything more!'

"Well, it looked then as if she couldn't possibly live through the night, and all her mother could think of was to comfort her. She told her that they would go away and forget it all, and Miss Annie clung to her through the whole terrible thing. We none of us got any sleep that night, and I think it was at about three o'clock the next morning that I crept to the door, and the doctor—Doctor Leslie—an old English doctor who was very kind, came to the door and gave me the poor little pitiful baby in a blanket. I almost screamed when I took it, for the poor little soul was alive, working her little mouth! I took her to my room, and indeed I baptized her myself—I named her Mary for my mother, and Leslie for the doctor, but I never thought she'd need a name—then. She was under four pounds, and with a little claw like a monkey's paw, and so thin we didn't dare dress her—we thought she was three months too soon, then, and I just sat watching her, waiting for her to die, and thinking of my own——!

"Miss Annie was given up the next day, she'd gone into a brain fever, but my poor little soul was wailing a good healthy wail—I remember I cried bitterly when the doctor told me not to hope for her! But she lived—and on the fourth day Mrs. Melrose sent us away, and we went and stayed in the country for two months after that.

"Then I had a letter from the Riviera, the first that'd come. Miss Annie was getting well, her hair was coming out curly, and she hardly remembered anything about what had happened at all. She wasn't nineteen then, poor child! She had cried once, her mother wrote, and had said she thanked God the baby had died and that was all she ever said of it.

"I brought the baby home, and for nearly three years she lived with my own, and of course Mrs. Melrose paid me for it. And then one day Louison Courtot came to see me—I'd known her, of course—Mr. Theodore's wife, that had been Miss Annie's maid. She had a letter from Mrs. Melrose, and she took Leslie away, and gave her to her grandmother—just according to plan. Well, I didn't like it—though it gave the child her rights, but it didn't seem honest. I had no call to interfere, and a few months later Mrs. Melrose gave me the double house in Brooklyn, that you'll well remember, Norma—and your own father made out the deed of gift, Mr. Chris——!

"And then, perhaps a year later, Louison came to call on me again, and with her was a little girl—four years old, and I looked at her, and looked at Louison, and I said, 'My God—that's a Melrose!' She said, yes, it was Theodore's child."

"Norma!" Chris said.

"Norma—and I remember her as if it was yesterday! With a blue velvet coat on her, and a white collar, and the way she dragged off her little mittens to go over and play with Rose and Wolf—and the little coaxing air she had! So then Louison told me the story, how she had never told Mrs. Melrose that Theodore really had a daughter, because she hated her so! But she was going to be married again, and go to Canada, and she wanted me to keep the baby until she could send for her. I said I would see how it went, but I could see then that there never was in the world——" Mrs. Sheridan interrupted herself, coughed, and glanced at the girl. "Well, we liked Norma right then and there!" she finished, a little tamely.

"Oh, Aunt Kate!" Norma said, smiling through tears, her hand tight upon the older woman's, "you never will praise me!"

"So Norma," the story went on, "had her supper that night between my two children, and for fourteen years she never knew that she wasn't our own. And perhaps she never would have known if Louison hadn't written me that she was in a hospital—she was to have an operation, and she was willing at last to make peace with her husband's family. In the same letter was her husband's note that she was gone, so I had to use my own judgment then. And when I heard Norma talk of the rich girls she saw in the bookstore, Mr. Chris, and knew how she loved what money could do for her, it seemed to me that at least I must tell her grandmother the truth. So we came here, three years ago, and if it wasn't for Miss Alice's mistake about her, perhaps the story would have come out then! But that's all the truth."

Chris nodded, his arms folded on his chest, his tired face very thoughtful.

"It makes her a rich woman, Mrs. Sheridan," he said.

"I suppose so, sir. I understand Mr. Melrose—the old gentleman—left everything to his son, Theodore."

"But not only that," Chris said. "She can claim every penny that has ever been paid over to Leslie, all through her minority, and since she came of age, and she also inherits the larger part of her grandmother's estate, under the will. Probably Mrs. Melrose would have changed that, if she had lived when all this came to light, and given that same legacy to Leslie, but we can't act on that supposition. The court will probably feel that a very grave injustice has been done Norma, and exact the full arrears."