It was exactly nineteen minutes past five o'clock when Wolf Sheridan
walked into the Grand Central Station that afternoon. He had stopped
outside to send his wife some flowers, and just a brief line of
farewell, and he was thinking so hard of Norma that it seemed natural
that the woman who was coming toward him, in the great central
concourse, should suggest her. The woman was pretty, too, and wore the
sort of dashing little hat that Norma often wore, and there was
something so familiar about the belted brown coat and the soft brown
furs that Wolf's heart gave a great plunge, and began to
ache--ache--ache--hopelessly again.
The brown coat came nearer--and nearer. And then he saw that the wearer
was indeed his wife. She had dewy violets in her belt, and her violet
eyes were dewy, too, and her face paled suddenly as she put her hand on
his arm.
What Norma all that tired and panicky afternoon had planned to say to
Wolf on this occasion was something like this:
"Wolf, if you ever loved me, and if I ever did anything that made you
happy, and if all these years when I have been your little sister, and
your chum, and your wife, mean anything to you--don't push me away now!
I am sorrier for my foolishness, and more ashamed of it, than you can
possibly be! I think it was never anything but weakness and vanity that
made me want to flirt with Chris Liggett. I think that if he had once
stopped flattering me, and if ever our meetings had been anything but
stolen fruit, as it were, I would have seen how utterly blind I was! I'm
different now, Wolf; I know that what I felt for him was only shallow
vanity, and that what I feel for you is the deepest and realest love
that any woman ever knew! There's nothing--no minute of the day or night
when I don't need you. There's nothing that you think that isn't what I
think! I want to go West with you, and make a home there, and when you
go to China, or go to India, I want you to go because your wife has
helped you--because you have had happy years of working and
experimenting and picnicking and planning--with me!
"It's all over, Wolf, that Melrose business--that dream! I've said
good-bye to them, and they have to me, and they know I'm never coming
back! I'm a Sheridan now--really and truly--for ever."
And in the lonesome and bitter days in which his great dream had come
true, without Norma to share it, days in which he had been thinking of
her as affiliated more and more with the element he despised, identified
more and more with the man who had wrecked--or tried to wreck--her life,
Wolf had imagined this meeting, and imagined her as tentatively holding
out the olive branch of peace; and he had had time to formulate exactly
what he should answer to such an appeal.
"I'm sorry, Norma," he had imagined himself saying. "I'm terribly sorry!
But just talking doesn't undo these things, just _saying_ that you
didn't mean it, and that it's all over. No, married life can't be picked
up and put down again like a coat. You _were_ my wife, and God knows I
worshipped you--heart and soul! If some day these people get tired of
you, or you get tired of them, that'll be different! But you've cut me
too deep--you've killed a part of me, and it won't come alive again!
I've been through hell--wondering what you were doing, what you were
going to do! I never should have married you; now let's call it all
quits, and get out of it the best way we can!"
But when he saw her, the familiar, lovely face that he had loved for so
many years, when he felt the little gloved hand on his arm, and realized
that somehow, out of the utter desolation and loneliness of the big
city, she had come to him again, that she was here, mistily smiling at
him, and he could touch her and hear her voice, everything else
vanished, as if it had never been, and he put his big arm about her
hungrily, and kissed her, and they were both in tears.
"Oh, Wolf----!" Norma faltered, the dry spaces of her soul flooding with
springtime warmth and greenness, and a great happiness sweeping away all
consciousness of the place in which they stood, and the interested eyes
about them. "Oh, Wolf----!" She thought that she added, "Would you have
gone away without me!" but as a matter of fact words were not needed
now.
"Nono--you _do_ love me?" he whispered. Or perhaps he only thought he
enunciated the phrase, for although Norma answered, it was not audibly.
Neither of them ever remembered anything coherent of that first five
minutes, in which momentous questions were settled between Norma's
admiring comment upon Wolf's new coat, and in which they laughed and
cried and clung together in shameless indifference to the general
public.
But presently they were calm enough to talk, and Wolf's first
constructive remark, not even now very steady or clear, was that he must
put off his going, get hold of Voorhies somehow----
But no, Norma said, even while they were dashing toward the telegraph
office. She had already bought her ticket; she was going,
too--to-night--this very hour----!
Wolf brought her up short, ecstatic bewilderment in his face.
"But your trunks----?"
"Regina--I tell you it's all settled--Regina sends them on after me. And
I've got a new big suit-case, and my old brown one, that's plenty for
the present! They're checked here, in the parcel-room----"
"But we'll----" They had started automatically to rush toward the
parcel-room, but now he brought her up short again. "It's five-thirty
now," he muttered, turning briskly in still another direction, "let me
have your ticket, we'll have to try for a section--it's pretty late, but
there may be cancellations!"
"Oh, but see, Wolf----! I've been here since half-past four. I've got
the A drawing-room in Car 131----" She brought forth an official-looking
envelope, and flashed a flimsy bit of coloured paper. For a third time
Wolf checked his hurried rushing, and they both broke into delicious
laughter. "I've been at it all day, with Aunt Kate," Norma said,
proudly. "I've been to banks and to Judge Lee's office, and I've seen
Annie and Leslie, and I bought a new wrapper and a suit-case, and--oh,
and I saw Kitty Barry, and I got you a book for the train, and I got
myself one----"
"Oh, Norma," Wolf said, his eyes filling, "you God-blessèd little
adorable idiot, do you know how I love you? My darling--my own wife, do
you know that I want to die, to-night, I'm so happy! Do you realize what
it's going to mean to us, poking about Chicago, and sending home little
presents to Rose and the kids, and reaching San Francisco, and going up
to the big mine? Do you realize that I feel like a man out of jail--like
a kid who knows it's Saturday morning?"
"Well--I feel that way, too!" Norma smiled. "And now," she added, in a
businesslike tone, "we've got to look for Aunt Kate and Rose, and get
our bags; and Leslie said to-day that it was a good idea to wire a
Chicago hotel for a room, just for the few hours before the Overland
pulls out, because one feels so dirty and tired; do you realize that
I've never spent a night on a Pullman yet?"
"And I'll turn in the ticket for my lower," Wolf said; "we'll have
dinner on board, so that's all right----"
"Oh, Wolf, and won't that be fun?" Norma exulted. And then, joyously:
"Oh, there they are!"
And she fled across the great space to meet Rose, pretty and matronly,
at the foot of the great stairway, and Harry grinning and proud, with
his little sturdy white-caped boy in his arms, and Aunt Kate beaming
utter happiness upon them all. And then ensued that thrilling time of
incoherencies and confusions, laughter and tears, to which the big place
is, by nature, dedicated. They were parting so lightly, but they all
knew that there would be changes before they six met again. To Aunt
Kate, holding close the child whose destinies had been so strangely
entangled with her own, the moment held a poignant pleasure as well as
pain. She was launched now, their imperious, beloved youngest; she had
been taken to the mountain-tops, and shown the world at her feet, and
she had chosen bravely and wisely, chosen her part of service and
simplicity and love. Life would go on, changes indeed and growth
everywhere, but she knew that the years would bring her back a new
Norma--a developed, sweetened, self-reliant woman--and a new Wolf, his
hard childhood all swept away and forgotten in the richness and beauty
of this woman's love and companionship. And she was content.
"And, Wolf--she told you about Kitty! Every month, as long as they need
it," Rose said, crying heartily, as she clung to her brother. "Why, it's
the most wonderful thing I ever heard! Poor Louis Barry can't believe
it--he broke down completely! And Kitty was crying, and kissing the
children, and she knelt down, and put her arms about Norma's knees; and
Norma was crying, too--you never saw anything like it!"
"She never told me a word about it," Wolf said, trying to laugh, and
blinking, as he looked at her, a few feet away. One of her arms was
about his mother, her hand was in Harry's, her face close to the rosy
baby's face.
"Wolf," his sister said, earnestly, drying her eyes, "it will bring a
blessing on your own children----!"
"Ah, Rose!" he answered, quickly. "Pray that there is one, some day--one
of our own as sweet as yours are!"
"Ah, you'll have everything, you two, never fear!" she said, radiantly.
And then a gate opened, and the bustle about them thickened, and
laughing faces grew pale, and last words faltered.
Harry gave Rose the baby, and put his arm about Rose's mother, and they
watched them go, the red-cap leading with the suit-cases, Wolf carrying
another, Norma on his arm, twisting herself about, at the very last
second, to smile an April smile over her shoulder, and wave the green
jade handle of her slim little umbrella. There was just a glimpse of
Wolf's old boyish, proud, protecting smile, and then his head drooped
toward his companion, and the surging crowd shut them out of sight.
Then Rose immediately was concerned for the little baby. Wouldn't it be
wiser to go straight home, just for fear that Mrs. Noon might have
fallen asleep--and the house caught on fire----? Mrs. Sheridan blew her
nose and dried her eyes, and straightened her widow's bonnet, and
cleared her throat, and agreed that it would. And they all went away.
But there was another watcher who had shared, unseen, all this last
half-hour, and who stood immovable to the last second, until the iron
gates had actually clashed shut. It was a well-built, keen-eyed man, in
an irreproachably fitting fur-collared overcoat, who finally turned
away, fitting his eyeglasses, on their black ribbon, firmly upon the
bridge of his nose, and sighing just a little as he went back to the
sidewalk, and climbed into a waiting roadster.
Even after he took his seat at the wheel, he made no effort to start the
car, but sat slowly drawing on his heavy gloves, and staring
abstractedly at the dull, uninteresting stretch of street before him,
where a dismal spring wind was stirring chaff and papers about the
subway entrance, and surface cars were grinding and ringing on the
curve.
It looked dull and empty--dull and empty, he thought. She had been very
happy, looking up at her man, kissing her people good-bye. She was a
remarkable woman, Norma.
"A remarkable woman--Norma," he said, half-aloud. "She will make him a
wonderful wife; she will help him to go a long way. And she never would
have had patience for formal living; it wasn't in her!"
But he remembered what was in her, what eager gaiety, what hunger for
new impressions, what courage in seizing her dilemmas the instant she
saw them. He remembered the flash of her eyes, and the curve of her
proud little mouth.
"Theodore had more charm than any of them," he said, "and she is like
him. Well--perhaps I'll meet somebody like her, some day, and the story
will have a different ending!"
But he knew in his heart that there was nobody like her, and that she
had gone out of his life for ever.
* * * * *
They had hung the belted brown coat over the big new gray one in the
drawing-room, and Norma had brushed her hair, and Wolf had shoved the
suit-cases under the seats, and they had gone straight into the
dining-car, and were at a lighted little shining table by this time.
Wolf had had no lunch; Norma was, she said, starving. They ordered their
meal just as the train drew out of the underground arcades and swept
over the city, in the twilight of the dull, sunless day.
Norma looked down, and joy and a vague heartache struggled within her.
The little city blocks, draped with their frail tangles of fire-escapes,
were as clean-cut as toys. In the streets children were screaming and
racing, at the doorways women loitered and talked. Great trucks lumbered
in and out among surging pedestrians, and women and children stood
before the green-grocers' displays of oranges and cabbages, and trickled
in and out of the markets, where cheap cuts were advertised in great
chalk signs on the windows. Red brick, yellow brick, gray cement, the
streets fled by; the dear, familiar streets that she and Wolf, and she
and Rose, had tramped and explored, in the burning dry heat of July, in
the flutter of November's first snows.
"Say good-bye to it, Wolf; it will be a long time before we see New York
again!"
Wolf looked down, grinning. Then, as they left the city, and the dusk
deepened, his eyes went toward the river, went toward the vague and
waiting West. The Palisades lay, a wide bar of soft dull gray, against
the paler dove-colour of the sky. Above them, bare trees were etched
sharply, and beneath them was the satiny surface of the full Hudson.
It was still water, and the river was smooth enough to give back a clear
reflection of the buildings and the wharves on the opposite shore, and
the floating ice from the north looked like rounded bunches of foam
arrested on the shining waters.
Suddenly the sinking sun evaded the smother of cloud, and flashed out
red and shining, for only a few brilliant minutes. It caught window
glass like flame, twinkled and smouldered in the mirror of the river,
and lighted the under edges of low clouds with a crisp touch of apricot
and pink. Wet streets shone joyously, doves rose in a circling whirl
from a near-by roof, and all the world shone and sparkled in the last
breath of the spring day. Then dusk came indeed, and the villages
across the river were strung with increasing lights, and in the tender
opal softness of the evening sky Norma saw a great star hanging.
"That's a good omen--that's our own little star!" she said softly to
herself. She looked up to see Wolf smiling at her, and the smile in her
own eyes deepened, and she stretched a warm and comradely hand to him
across the little table.
THE END