"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 ident.i.ty 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 circ.u.mstances 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 inst.i.tution. Deep and strong and unconquerable above them all rose the tide of love and pa.s.sion, 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, pa.s.sionately, for the first time in her life.

CHAPTER XXI

Suddenly and smoothly they were all transported to town again, and the vigour and sparkle of the autumn was exhilarating to Norma in spite of herself. The Park was a glory of red and gold leaves; morning came late, and the dew shone until ten o'clock; bright mists rose smoking into the sunlight, and when Norma walked home from a luncheon, or from an hour of furious squash or tennis at the club, the early winter dusk would be closing softly in, the mists returning, and the lights of the long Mall in the park blooming round and blue in the twilight.

She was with Mrs. Melrose this winter, an arrangement extremely welcome to the old lady, who was lonely and liked the stir of young life in the house. Alice had quite charmingly and naturally suggested the change, and Norma's belongings had been moved away from the little white room next to Miss Slater's.

One reason for it was that Alice had had two nurses all summer long, and found the increased service a great advantage. Then Mama was all alone and not so well as she had been; getting old, and reluctant to take even the necessary exercise.

"And then you're too young to be shut up with stupid home-loving folk like Chris and me," Alice had told Norma, lightly.

"Your stupidity is proverbial, Aunt Alice," Norma had laughed. She did not care where she went any more. Chris had greeted her casually, upon their meeting in October, and had studiously, if inconspicuously, ignored her. But even to see him at all was so great a relief to her over-charged heart that for weeks this was enough. She must meet him occasionally, she heard his name every day, and she knew where he was and what he was doing almost at every moment. She treasured every look, every phrase of his, and she glowed and grew beautiful in the conviction that, even though he was still mysteriously angry with her, he had that old consciousness of her presence, too; he might hate her, but he could not ignore her.

And then, in December, the whole matter reached a sudden crisis, and Norma came to feel that she would have been glad to have the matter go back to this state of doubt and indecision again.

Mrs. von Behrens was on the directorate of a working girls' club that needed special funds every winter, and this year the money was to be raised by an immense entertainment, at which generous professional singers were to be alternated on a brilliant programme with society girls and men, in tableaux and choruses. Norma, who had a charming if not particularly strong voice, was early impressed into service, because she was so good-natured, so dependable, and pretty and young enough to carry off a delectable costume. The song she sang had been specially written for the affair, and in the quaint dance that accompanied it she was drilled by the dance authority of the hour. A chorus of eight girls and eight men was added to complete the number, and the gaiety of the rehearsals, and the general excitement and interest, carried the matter along to the last and dress rehearsal with a most encouraging rush.

Annie had originally selected Chris for Norma's companion in the song, for Chris had a pleasant, presentable voice, and Chris in costume was always adequate to any role. Theatricals had been his delight, all his life long, and among the flattering things that were commonly said of Chris was that he had robbed the stage of a great character actor.

But Chris had begged off, to take a minor part in another _ensemble_, and Norma had a youth named Roy Gillespie for her partner. Roy was a big, fat, blond boy, good-natured and stupid and rather in love with Norma, and as the girl was entirely unconscious of Annie's original plan, she was quite satisfied with him.

The dress rehearsal was on a dark Thursday afternoon before the Sat.u.r.day of the performance. It took place in the big empty auditorium, where it was to drag along from twelve o'clock noon, until the preparations for the regular evening performance drove the amateurs, protesting, away.