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 matinée and tea
engagement. The third meeting had been for luncheon again, and after
lunch they had wandered through an Avenue gallery, looking at the
pictures, and talking about themselves.
Chris had loaned her books, little slim books of dramas or essays, and
Chris had talked to her of plays and music. One night, when Wolf was in
Philadelphia, Chris took her to the opera again, duly returning her to
Aunt Kate at half-past eleven, and politely disclaiming Aunt Kate's
gratitude for his goodness to little Norma.
He never attempted to touch her, to kiss her; he never permitted himself
an affectionate term, or a hint of the passion that enveloped him; they
were friends, that was all, and surely, surely, they told themselves, a
self-respecting man and woman may be friends--may talk and walk and
lunch together, and harm no one? Norma knew that it was the one vital
element in Chris's life, as in her own, and that the hours that he did
not 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 Grimkés"; "The Life
of Elizabeth Prentiss"; "The Letters of Charles Dickens."
Nine struck; ten; eleven. Wolf had some six or seven large books about
him, and alternated his plunges into them with animated whispered
conversations with a silver-headed old man, two hours ago an utter
stranger, but always henceforth to be affectionately quoted by Wolf as a
friend.
They indulged in the extravagance of a taxi-cab for the home trip. Norma
left Wolf still reading, after winning from him a kiss and a promise not
to "worry", and went to bed and to sleep. When she wakened, after some
nine delicious hours, he was gone; gone to Philadelphia, as it proved.
Breakfasting at ten o'clock, in a flood of sweet winter sunshine, she
put a brave face on the matter. She told herself that it was better that
Wolf should know, and only the part of true kindness not to deny what,
for good or ill, was true. The memory of his grave and troubled face
distressed her, but she reminded herself that he would be back on
Saturday, and then he would have forgiven her. She would see Chris
to-day, to-morrow, and the day after, and by that time they would have
said everything that there was to say, and they would never see each
other again.
For it was a favourite hallucination of theirs that every meeting was to
be the last. Not, said Chris, that there was any harm in it, but it was
wiser not to see each other. And when Norma, glowing under his eyes,
would echo this feeling, he praised her for her courage as if they had
resisted the temptation already.
"I've thought it all over, Chris," she would say, "and I know that the
wisest way is to stop. And you must help me." And when Chris answered,
"Norma, I don't see where you get that marvellous courage of yours," it
did not occur to Norma to question in what way she was showing courage
at all. She lived upon his praise, and could not have enough of it. He
never tired of telling her that she was beautiful, good, brave, a
constant inspiration, and far above the ordinary type of woman; and
Norma believed him.
On the day before Wolf's first week-end return from Philadelphia, Chris
was very grave. When he and Norma were halfway through their luncheon,
in the quiet angle of an old-fashioned restaurant, he told her why.
Alice was failing. Specialists had told him that England was out of the
question. She might live a year, but the probability was against it.
They--he and Norma--Chris said, must consider this, now.
Norma considered it with a paling face. It--it couldn't make any
difference, she said, quickly and nervously.
And then, for the first time, he talked to her of her responsibility in
the matter, of what their love meant to them both. Wolf had his claim,
true; but what was truly the generous thing for a woman to do toward a
man she did not love? Wasn't a year or two of hurt feelings, even anger
and resentment, better than a loveless marriage that might last fifty
years?
This was a terrible problem, and Norma did not know what to think. On
the one hand was the certainty of that higher life from which she had
been exiled since her marriage: the music, the art, the letters, the
cultivated voices and fragrant rooms, the 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.