More than a week later Annie gave a luncheon to a dozen women, and
telephoned Norma beforehand, with a request that the girl come early
enough to help her with name cards.
"These damnable engagement luncheons," said Aunt Annie, limping about
the long table, and grumbling at everything as she went. Annie had
wrenched her ankle in alighting from her car, and was cross with nagging
pain. "Here, put Natalie next to Leslie, Norma; no, that puts the
Gunnings together. I'll give you Miss Blanchard--but you don't speak
French! Here, give me your pencil--and confound these things
anyway----Fowler," she said to the butler, "I don't like to see a thing
like that on the table--carry that away, please; and here, get somebody
to help you change this, that won't do! That's all right--only I want
this as you had it day before yesterday--and don't use those, get the
glass ones----"
And so fussing and changing and criticizing, Annie went away, and Norma
followed her up to her bedroom.
"I'm wondering when we're going to give _you_ an engagement luncheon,
Norma," said the hostess, in a whirl of rapid dressing. "Who's ahead
now?"
"Oh--nobody!" Norma answered, with a mirthless laugh. She had been
listless and pale for several days, and did not seem herself at all.
"Forrest Duer, is it?"
"Oh, good heavens--Aunt Annie! He's twenty-one!"
"Is that all--he's such a big whale!----Don't touch my hair, Phoebe,
it'll do very well!" said Annie to the maid. "Well, don't be in too much
of a hurry, Norma," she went on kindly. "Nothing like being sure!
That"--Annie glanced at the retiring maid--"that's what makes me nervous
about Leslie," she confessed. "I'm afraid we hurried the child into it
just a little bit. It was an understood thing since they were nothing
but kiddies."
"Leslie is outrageously spoiled," Norma said, not unkindly.
"Leslie? Oh, horribly. Mama always spoils everyone and poor Theodore
spoiled her, too," Annie conceded.
"She told me herself yesterday," Norma went on, with a trace of her old
animation, "that they've overdrawn again. Now, Aunt Annie, I do think
that's outrageous! Chris straightened them all out last--when was
it?--June, after the baby came, and they have an enormous
income--thousands every month, and yet they are deep in again!"
"The wretched thing is that they quarrel about that!" Annie agreed.
"Well, exactly! That was what it was about day before yesterday, and
Leslie told me she cried all night. And you know the other day she took
Patricia and came home to Aunt Marianna, and it was terrible!"
"How much do you suppose the servants know of that?" Annie asked,
frowning.
"Oh, they _must_ know!" Norma replied.
"Foolish, foolish child! You know, Norma," Annie resumed, "Leslie comes
by her temper naturally. She is half French; her mother was a
Frenchwoman--Louison Courtot."
"It's a pretty name," Norma commented. "Did you know her?"
"Know her? She was my maid when I was about seventeen, a very superior
girl. I used to practise my French with her. She was extremely pretty.
After my father died my mother and I went to Florida, and when we came
back the whole thing broke. I thought it would kill Mama! At first we
thought Theodore had simply gotten her into 'trouble,' to use the dear
old phrase. But _pas du tout_; she had 'ze _mar-ri-age_ certificate' all
safe and sound. But he was no more in love with her than I was--a boy
nineteen! Mama made her leave the house, and cut off Theodore's
allowance entirely, and for a while they were together--but it couldn't
last. Teddy got his divorce when he went with Mama to California, but he
was ill then, though we didn't know it, poor boy! He lived five years
after that."
"But he saw Leslie?"
"Oh, dear, yes!" Annie said, buffing her twinkling finger-nails, idly.
"Didn't Mama ever tell you about that?"
"No, she never mentions it."
"Well, that was awful, too--for poor Mama. About four years after the
divorce, one night when we were all at home--it was just after Mama and
I came back from Europe, and the year before Hendrick and I were
married--suddenly there was a rush in the hall, and in came Theodore's
wife--Louison Courtot! It seems Mama had been in touch with her ever
since we returned, but none of us knew that. And she had Leslie with
her, a little thing about four years old--Leslie just faintly remembers
it. She had fought Mama off, at first, about giving her baby up, but now
she was going to be married, and she had finally consented to do as Mama
wanted. Leslie came over to me, and got into my lap, and went to sleep,
I remember. Theodore was terribly ill, and I remember that Louison was
quite gentle with him--surprised us all, in fact, she was so mild. She
had been a wild thing, but always most self-respecting; a prude, in
fact. She even stooped over Theodore, and kissed him good-bye, and then
she knelt down and kissed Leslie, and went away. Mama had intended that
she should always see the child, if she wanted to, but she never came
again. She was married, I know, a few weeks later, and long afterward
Mama told me that she was dead. Ted came to adore the baby, and of
course she's been the greatest comfort to Mama, so it all turns out
right, after all. But we're a sweet family!" finished Annie, rising to
go downstairs. "And now," she added, on the stairs, "if there were to be
serious trouble between Acton and Leslie----Well, it isn't thinkable!"
Leslie herself, charming in a flowered silky dress, with a wide flowery
hat on her yellow hair, was waiting for them in the big, shaded hallway.
The little matron was extremely attractive in her new dignities, and her
babyish face looked more ridiculously youthful than ever as she talked
of "my husband," "my little girl," "my house," and "my attorney."
Leslie, like Annie and Alice, was habitually wrapped in her own affairs,
more absorbed in the question of her own minute troubles than in the
most widespread abuses of the world. When Leslie saw a coat, the
identity of the wearer interested her far less than the primary
considerations of the coat's cut and material, and the secondary
decision whether or not she herself would like such a garment.
Consequently, she glanced but apathetically at Norma; she had seen the
dotted blue swiss before, and the cornflower hat; she had seen Aunt
Annie's French organdie; there was nothing there either to envy or
admire.
"How's the baby, dear; and how's Acton?" Annie asked, perfunctorily.
Leslie sighed.
"Oh, they're both fine," she answered, indifferently. "I've been all
upset because my cook got married--just walked out. I told Acton not to
pay her, but of course he did; it's nothing to him if my whole house is
upset by the selfishness of somebody else. He and Chris are going off
this afternoon with Joe and Denny Page, for the Thousand Islands----"
"I didn't know Chris was here!" Annie said, in surprise.
"I didn't, myself. He came up with Acton, late last night. They'd
motored all the way; I was asleep when they got in. I didn't know it
until I found him at breakfast this morning----"
Norma's heart stood still. The name alone was enough to shake her to the
very soul, but the thought that he was here--in Newport--this minute,
and that she might not see him, probably indeed would not see him, made
her feel almost faint.
She had not seen him since the meeting on the hotel steps nearly two
weeks ago. It had been the longest and the saddest two weeks in Norma's
life. It was in vain that she reminded herself that her love for him
was weakness and madness, and that by no possible shift of
circumstances could it come to happy consummation. It was in vain that
she pondered Alice's claims, and all the family claims, and the general
claim of society as an institution. Deep and strong and unconquerable
above them all rose the tide of love and passion, the gnawing and
burning hunger for the sight of him, the sound of his voice, the touch
of his hand.
Life had become for her a vague and changing dream, with his name for
its only reality. Somewhere in the fog of days was Chris, and she would
not live again until she saw him. He must forgive her; he must explain
his coldness, explain the change in him, and then she would be content
just with the old friendliness, just the old nearness and the occasional
word together.
Every letter that Joseph brought her, every call to the telephone, meant
to her only the poignant possibility of a message from him. She sickened
daily with fresh despair, and fed herself daily with new hopes.
To-day she was scarcely conscious of the hilarious progress of the
luncheon; she looked at the prospective bride, in whose honour Aunt
Annie entertained, only with a pang of wonder. What was it like, the
knowledge that one was openly beloved, the miraculous right to plan an
unclouded future together? The mere thought of being free to love Chris,
of having him free to claim her, almost dizzied Norma with its vista of
utter felicity. She had to drive it resolutely from her mind. Not
that--never that! But there must at least be peace and friendship
between them.
At three o'clock the luncheon was over; it was half-past three when
Leslie and she drove to the Melrose "cottage"--as the fourteen-room,
three-story frame house was called. Norma had searched the drive with
her eyes as they approached. The gray roadster was not there. There was
no sign of Christopher's hat or coat in the hallway. Alice was alone, in
her downstairs sitting-room. Norma's heart sank like a lump of ice.
"Did you see Chris?" the invalid began, happily. "We had the nicest
lunch together--just we two. And look at the books the angel brought
me--just a feast. You saw him, Leslie, didn't you, dear? He said he
caught you and Acton at breakfast. I was perfectly amazed. Miss Slater
moved me out here about eleven o'clock, and I heard someone walking
in----! He's off now, with the Pages; he told you that, of course!"
"He looks rotten, I think," Leslie offered. "I told him he was working
too hard."
"Well, Judge Lee is sick, and he hasn't been in to the office since
June," Alice said, "and that makes it very hard for Chris. But he says
his room at the club is cool, and now he'll have two or three lovely
days with the Page boys----"
Norma, who had subsided quietly into a chair, was looking at the yellow
covers of the new French and Italian novels.
"And then does he come back here Monday, for the tennis?" she asked,
clearing her throat.
"He says not!" Alice answered, regretfully. "He's going straight on down
to the city. Then next week-end is the cruise with the Dwights; and
after that, I suppose we'll all be home!"
She went on into a conversation with Leslie, relative to the move. After
a few moments Norma went out through the opened French window onto the
wide porch. It was rather a dark, old-fashioned side porch, with an
elaborate wooden railing, and potted hydrangeas under a striped awning.
The house had neither the magnificence of Annie's gray-stone mansion or
the beauty of Leslie's colonial white and green at Glen Cove; it had
been built in the late eighties, and was inflexibly ornate.
Norma went down slowly through the garden, and walked vaguely toward the
hot glitter and roll of the blue sea. Her misery was almost unbearable.
Weeks--it would be weeks before she would see him! He had been here
to-day--here in the garden--in Alice's room, and she had not had a word
or a sign.
Children and nurses were on the beach, grouped in the warm shade. The
season was over, there were yellow leaves in the hedges, Norma's feet
rustled among the dropped glory of the old trees. The world seemed hot,
dry, lifeless before her.
"I wish I were dead!" she cried, passionately, for the first time in her
life.