Regina roused Norma just in time for the long, wearisome ceremonials of
the following day, a cold, bright gusty day, when the wet streets
flashed back sombre reflections of the motor wheels, and the newly
turned earth oozed flashing drops of water. The cortège left the old
Melrose house at ten minutes before ten o'clock, and it was four before
the tired, headachy, cramped members of the immediate family group
regathered there, to discard the crape-smothered hats, and the odorous,
sombre furs, and to talk quietly together as they sipped hot soup and
crumbled rolls. Everything had been changed, the flowers were gone,
furniture was back in place, and the upper front room had been opened
widely to the suddenly spring-like afternoon. There was not a fallen
violet petal to remind her descendants that the old mistress of forty
full years was gone for ever.
Annie's boys came to bring Mother home, after so many strange days'
absence, and Norma liked the way that Annie smiled wearily at Hendrick,
and pressed her white face hungrily against the boys' blonde, firm
little faces. Leslie, in an unwontedly tender mood, drew Acton's arm
about her, as she sat in a big chair, and told him with watering eyes
that she would be glad to see old Patsie-baby on Sunday. Norma sat
alone, the carved Tudor oak rising high above her little tired head with
its crushed soft hair, and Chris sat alone, too, at the other end of
the table, and somehow, in the soul fatigue that was worse than any
bodily fatigue, she did not want the distance between them bridged, she
did not want--she shuddered away from the word--love-making from Chris
again!
Leslie, who felt quite ill with strain and sorrow, went upstairs to bed,
the Von Behrens went away, and presently Acton disappeared, to telephone
old Doctor Murray that his wife would like a sedative--or a heart
stimulant, or some other little attention as a recognition of her broken
state.
Then Chris and Norma were alone, and with a quiet dignity that surprised
him she beckoned him to the chair next to her, and, leaning both elbows
on the cloth, fixed him with her beautiful, tired eyes.
"I want to talk to you, Chris, and this seems to be the time!" she said.
"You'll be deep in all sorts of horrible things for weeks now, poor old
Chris, and I want this said first! I've been thinking very seriously all
these days--they seem months--since Aunt Marianna died, and I've come to
the conclusion that I'm--well, I'm a fool!"
She said the last word so unexpectedly, with such obvious surprise, that
Chris's tired, colourless face broke into something like a smile. He had
seated himself next to her, and was evidently bending upon her problem
his most earnest attention.
"Some months ago," Norma said in a low voice, "I thought--I
_thought_--that I fell in love! The man was rich, and handsome, and
clever, and he knew more--of certain things!--in his little finger, than
I shall ever know in my whole life. Not exactly more French, or more of
politics, or more persons--I don't mean quite that. But I mean a
conglomerate sort of--I'm expressing myself badly, but you understand--a
conglomerate total of all these things that make him an aristocrat!
That's what he is, an aristocrat. Now, I'm not! I've found that out. I'm
different."
"Nonsense!" Chris said, lightly, but listening patiently none the less.
"I know," Norma resumed, hammering her thought out slowly, and frowning
down at the teaspoon that she was measuring between her finger-tips, "I
know that there are two women in me. One is the Melrose, who
_could_--for I know I could!--push her husband out of sight, take up the
whole business of doing things correctly, from hair-dressing and writing
notes of condolence to being"--she could manage a hint of a smile under
swiftly raised lashes--"being presented at Saint James's!" she said. "In
five years she would be an admired and correct and popular woman, and
perhaps even married to this man I speak of! The other woman is my
little plain French mother's sort--who was a servant--my Aunt Kate's
kind," and Norma suddenly felt the tears in her eyes, and winked them
away with an April smile, "who belongs to her husband, who likes to cook
and tramp about in the woods, and send Christmas boxes to Rose's babies,
and--and go to movies, and picnics! And that's the sort of woman I _am_,
Chris," Norma ended, with a sudden firmness, and even a certain relief
in her voice. "I've just discovered it! I've been spoiled all my
life--I've been loved too much, I think, but I've thought it all out--it
really came to me, as I stood beside Aunt Marianna's grave to-day, and
you don't know how happy it's made me!"
"You are talking very recklessly, Norma," Chris said, as she paused, in
his quiet, definite voice. "You are over-excited now. There is no such
difference in the two--the two classes, to call them that, as you fancy!
The richer people, the people who, as you say, do things correctly, and
are presented at Saint James's, have all the simple pleasures, too. One
likes moving pictures now and then; I'm sure we often have picnics in
the summer. But there are women in New York--hundreds of them, who would
give the last twenty years of their lives to step into exactly what you
can take for the asking now. You will have Annie and me back of
you--this isn't the time, Norma, for me to say just how entirely you
will have my championship! But surely you know----"
He was just what he had always been: self-possessed, finished,
splendidly sure in voice and manner. He was rich, he was popular, he was
a dictator in his quiet way. And she knew even if the shock of his
wife's sudden going had pushed his thought of her into the background,
that in a few months he would be hovering about her again,
conventionally freed for conventional devotion.
She saw all this, and for the first time to-day she saw other things,
too. That he was forty, and looked it. That there was just the faintest
suggestion of thinning in his smooth hair, where Wolf's magnificent mane
was the thickest. That it was just a little bloodless, this decorous
mourning that had so instantly engulfed him, who had actually told her,
another man's wife, a few weeks before, that his own wife was dying, and
so would free him for the woman he loved at last!
In short, Norma mused, watching him as he fell into moody silence, he
had not scrupled to break the spirit of his bond to Alice, he had not
hesitated to tell Norma that he loved her when only Norma, and possibly
Alice, might suffer from his disloyalty. But when the sacred letter was
touched, the sacred outside of the vessel that must be kept clean before
the world, then Chris was instantly the impeccable, the irreproachable
man of his caste again. It was all part of the superficial smallness of
that world where arbitrary form ruled, where to send a wedding
invitation printed and not engraved, or to mispronounce the name of a
visiting Italian tenor or Russian dancer, would mark the noblest woman
in the world as hopelessly "not belonging."
"One of the things you do that really you oughtn't to, Norma," he
resumed, presently, in quiet distaste, "is assume that there is some
mysterious difference between, say, the Craigies, and well--your
husband. The Craigies are enormously wealthy, of course. That means that
they have always had fine service, music, travel, the best of everything
in educational ways, friendship with the best people--and those things
_are_ an advantage, generation after generation. It's absurd to deny
that Annie's children, for example, haven't any real and tremendous
advantages over--well, some child of a perfectly respectable family that
manages nicely on ten thousand a year. But that Annie's pleasures are
not as real, or that there must necessarily be something
dangerous--something detestable--in the life of the best people, is
ridiculous!"
"That's just what I do assert," she answered, bravely. "It may not be so
for you, for you were born to it! But when you've lived, as I have, in a
different sort of life, with people to whom meals, and the rent, and
their jobs, really matter--this sort of thing doesn't seem _real_. You
feel like bursting out laughing and saying, 'Oh, get out! What's the
difference if I _don't_ make calls, and broaden my vowels, and wear just
this and that, and say just this and that!' It all seems so _tame_."
"Not at all," Chris said, really roused. "Take Betty Doane, now, the
Craigies' cousin. There's nothing conventional about her. There's a girl
who dresses like a man all summer, who ran away from school and tramped
into Hungary dressed as a gipsy, who slapped Joe Brinckerhoff's face for
him last winter, and who says that when she loves a man she's going off
with him--no matter who he is, or whether he's married or not, or
whether she is!"
"I'll tell you what she sounds like to me, Chris, a little saucy girl of
about eight trying to see how naughty she can be! Why, that," said
Norma, eagerly, "that's not _real_. That isn't like house-hunting when
you know you can't pay more than thirty dollars' rent, or surprising
your husband with a new thermos bottle that he didn't think he could
afford!"
"Ah, well, if you _like_ slums, of course!" Chris said, coldly. "But
nothing can prevent your inheriting an enormous sum of money, Norma," he
said, ending the conversation, "and in six months you'll feel very
differently!"
"There is just one chance in ten--one chance in a hundred--that I
might!" she said to herself, going upstairs, after Chris and Acton, who
presently returned to the dining-room, had begun an undertoned
conversation. And with a sudden flood of radiance and happiness at her
heart, she sat down at her desk, and wrote to Wolf.
The note said:
WOLF DEAR:
I have been thinking very seriously, during these serious days,
and I am writing you more earnestly than I ever wrote any one in
my life. I want you to forgive me all my foolishness, and let me
come back to you. I have missed you so bitterly, and thought how
good and how sensible you were, and how you took care of us all
years ago, and gave Rose and me skates that Christmas that you
didn't have your bicycle mended, and how we all sat up and cried
the night Aunt Kate was sick, and you made us chocolate by the
rule on the box. I have been very silly, and I thought I
cared--and perhaps I _did_ care--for somebody else; or at least
I cared for what he stood for, but I am over that now, and I
feel so much older, and as if I needed you so. I shall have a
tremendous lot of money, and we'll just have to decide what to
do with it, but I think I know now that there won't be any
particular pleasure in spending it. We'll always love the old
car, and----But it just occurs to me that we _could_ send poor
Kitty Barry to the hospital, and perhaps ship them all off
somewhere where they'd get better. Aunt Kate would like that.
But won't you come up, Wolf, and see me? I'll meet you anywhere,
and we can talk, on Monday or Tuesday. Will you write me or wire
me? I can't wait to see you!
She cried over the letter, and over the signature that she was his
loving Nono, but she mailed it with a dancing heart. The road had been
dark and troubled for awhile, but it was all clear now! The wrong had
been--the whole wretched trouble had been--in her thinking that she
could toss aside the solemn oath that she had taken on the bewildering
day of her marriage almost a year ago.
Never since old, old days of childhood, when she and Wolf and Rose had
wiped the dishes and raked the yard, and walked a mile to the
twenty-five-cent seats at the circus, had Norma been so sure of
herself, and so happy. She felt herself promoted, lifted above the old
feelings and the old ways, and dedicated to the work before her. And one
by one the shadows lifted, and the illusions blew away, and she could
see her way clear for the first time in more than three years. It was
all simple, all right, all just as she would have had it. She would
never be a petted and wealthy little Leslie, she would never be a
leader, like Mrs. von Behrens, and she would never stand before the
world as the woman chosen by the incomparable Chris. Yet she was the
last Melrose, and she knew now how she could prove herself the proudest
of them all, how she could do these kinspeople of hers a greater favour
than any they had ever dreamed of doing her. And in the richness of
renouncing Norma knew herself to be for the first time truly rich.
Chris saw the difference in her next day, felt the new dignity, the
sudden transition from girl to woman, but he had no inkling of its
cause. Leslie saw it, and Annie, but Norma gave them no clue. At
luncheon Annie, who had joined them for the meal, proposed that Leslie
and Norma and the Liggetts come to her for a quiet family dinner, but
Norma begged off; she really must see Aunt Kate, and would seize this
opportunity to go home for a night. But leaving the table Norma asked
Chris if she might talk business to him for a few minutes.
They sat in the old library, Chris sunk in a great leather chair,
smoking cigarettes, Norma opposite, her white hands clasped on the
blackness of her simple gown, and her eyes moving occasionally from
their quiet study of the fire to rest on Chris's face.
"Chris," she said, "I've thought this all out, now, and I'm not really
asking your advice, I'm telling you what I am going to do! I'm going to
California with Wolf in a week or two--that's the first thing!"
He stared at her blankly, and as the minutes of silence between them
lengthened Norma noticed his lips compress themselves into a thin,
colourless line. But she returned his look bravely, and in her eyes
there was something that told the man she was determined in her
decision.
"I don't quite follow you, Norma," he said at last with difficulty. "You
mean that all the plans and hopes we shared and discussed----" He
faltered a moment and then made another effort: "Now that whatever
obstacles there were have been removed, and you and I are free to
fulfill our destinies, am I to understand that--that you are going back
to your husband?"
"Exactly." The girl's answer was firm and determined.
The colour fled from Chris's face, and a cold light came into his eye;
his jaw stiffened.
"You must use your own judgment, Norma," he answered, with a displeased
shrug.
"I'll leave with you, or send you, my power of attorney," the girl went
on, "and you and Hendrick as executors must do whatever you think right
and just--just deposit the money in the bank!"
"I see," Chris said, noncommittally.
"And there's another thing," Norma went on, with heightened colour. "I
don't want either Leslie or Aunt Annie ever to know--what you and I
know!"
Chris looked at her, frowning slightly.
"That's impossible, of course," he said. "What are they going to think?"
"They'll think nothing," Norma said, confidently, but with anxious eyes
fixed on his face, "because they'll know nothing. There'll be no change,
nothing to make them suspect anything."
"But--great God! You don't seem to understand, Norma. Proofs of your
birth, of your rightful heritage, your identity, the fact that you are
Theodore's child, must be shown them, of course. You have inherited by
Aunt Marianna's will the bulk of her personal fortune, but besides this,
as Theodore's child, you inherit the Melrose estate, and Leslie must
turn this all over to you, and make such restitution as she is able, of
all income from it which she has received since Judge Lee and I turned
it over to her on her eighteenth birthday."
"No, that's just what she is _not_ to do! I will get exactly what is
mentioned in the will--as Norma Sheridan, bonds and the Melrose
Building, and so on," Norma broke in, eagerly. "And that's enough,
goodness knows, and a thousand times more than Wolf and I ever expected
to have. Aunt Annie and Leslie are reconciled to that. But for the rest,
I refuse to accept it. I don't want it. I've never been so unhappy in my
life as I've been in this house, for all the money and the good times
and the beautiful clothes. And if that much didn't make me happy, why
should ten times more? Isn't it far, far better--all round----"
"You are talking absurdities," said Chris. "Do you think that Hendrick
and I could consent to this? Do you suppose----"
"Hendrick doesn't know it, Chris. It is only you and I and Aunt
Kate--that's all! And if I do this, and swear you and Aunt Kate to
secrecy, who is responsible, except me?"
Chris shook his head. "Aunt Marianna wished you righted--wished you to
take your place as Theodore's daughter. It is her wish, and it is only
our duty----"
"But think a minute, Chris, think a minute," Norma said, eagerly,
leaning forward in her chair, so that her locked hands almost touched
his knees. "_Was_ it her wish? She wanted me to _know_--that's certain!
And I do know. But do you really think she wanted Leslie to be shamed
and crushed, and to take away the money Leslie has had all her life, to
shock Aunt Annie, and stir that old miserable matter up with Hendrick?
Chris, you _can't_ think that! The one thing she would have wished and
prayed would have been that somehow the matter would have been righted
without hurting any one. Chris, _think_ before you tear the whole family
up by the roots. What harm is there in this way? I have plenty of
money--and I go away. The others go on just as they always have, and in
a little way--in just a hundredth part--I pay back dear old Aunt
Marianna for all the worrying and planning she did, to make up to me for
what should have been mine, and was Leslie's. Please--_please_, help me
to do this, Chris. I can't be happy any other way. Aunt Kate will
approve--you don't know how much she will approve, and it will repay
her, too, just a little, to feel that it's all known now, and that it
has turned out this way. And she will destroy every last line and shred
of letters and papers, and the photographs she said she had, and it will
all be over--for ever and for ever!"
"You put a terrible responsibility upon me," Chris said, slowly.
"No--I take it myself!" Norma answered. He had gotten to his feet, and
was standing at the hearth, and now she rose, too, and looked eagerly up
at him. "It isn't anything like the responsibility of facing the world
with the whole horrible story!"
Chris was silent, thinking. Presently he turned upon her the old smile
that she had always found irresistible, and put his two hands on her
shoulders.
"You are a wonderful woman, Norma!" he said, slowly. "What woman in the
world, but you, would do that? Yes, I'll do it--for Leslie's sake, and
Acton's sake, and because I believe Alice would think it as wonderful in
you as I do. But think," Chris said, "think just a few days, Norma. You
and I--you and I might go a long way, my dear!"
If he had said it even at this hour yesterday, he might have shaken her,
for the voice was the voice of the old Chris, and she had been even then
puzzled and confused to see the wisest way. But now everything was
changed; he could not reach her now, even when he put his arm about her,
and said that this was one of their rare last chances to be alone
together, and asked if it must be good-bye.
She looked up at him gravely and unashamedly.
"Yes, it must be good-bye--dear Chris!" she said, with a little emotion.
"Although I hope we will see each other often, if ever Wolf and I come
back. Engineers live in Canada and Panama and India and Alaska, you
know, and we never will know we are coming until we get here! And I'm
not going to try to thank you, Chris, for what you did for an ignorant,
silly, strange little girl; you've been a big brother to me all these
last years! And something more, of course," Norma added, bravely, "and
I won't say--I can't say--that if it hadn't been for Wolf, and all the
changes this year--changes in me, too--I wouldn't have loved you all my
life. But there's no place that you could take me, as Wolf Sheridan's
divorced wife, that would seem worth while to me, when I got there--not
if it was in the peerage!"
"There's just one thing that I want to say, too, Norma," Chris said,
suddenly, when she had finished. "I'm not good enough for you; I know
it. I see myself as I am, sometimes, I suppose. I think you're going to
be happy--and God knows I hope so; perhaps it _is_ a realer life, your
husband's: and perhaps a man who works for his wife with his hands and
his head has got something on us other fellows after all! I've often
wished----But that doesn't matter now. But I want you to know I'll
always remember you as the finest woman I ever knew--just the best there
is! And if ever I've hurt you, forgive me, won't you, Norma?--and--and
let me kiss you good-bye!"
She raised her face to his confidently, and her eyes were misty when she
went upstairs, because she had seen that his were wet. But there was no
more unhappiness; indeed an overwhelming sense that everything was
right--that every life had shifted back into normal and manageable and
infinitely better lines, went with her as she walked slowly out into the
sunshine, and wandered in the general direction of Aunt Kate's. As she
left the old Melrose home, the big limousine was standing at the door,
and presently Annie and Leslie would sweep out in their flowing veils
and crapes, and whirl off to the Von Behrens mansion. But Norma Sheridan
was content to walk to the omnibus, and to take the jolting front seat,
and to look down in all brotherly love and companionship at the moving
and shifting crowds that were glorying in the warm spring weather.
To be busy--to be needed--to be loved--she said to herself. That was the
sweet of life, and it could not be taken from the policeman at the
crossing or the humblest little shop-girl who scampered under his big
arm, or bought by the bored women in limousines who, furred and flowered
and feathered, were moving from the matinée to the tea table. Caroline
Craigie, Aunt Annie, Leslie; she had seen the material advantages of
life fail them all.