CHAPTER XXVII

The bitterness stayed with her, and gradually robbed her life of everything that was happy and content. Her little household round, that had been so absorbing and so important, became tedious and stupid. Rose, who was expecting her second confinement, had her husband's mother with her, and in care of the old baby, and making preparations for the new, was busy, and had small time for the old companionship; the evenings were too cold for motoring now, even if Wolf had not been completely buried in engineering journals and papers of all sorts.

Norma did not call on Annie again, but a fretted and outraged sense of Annie's coolness and aloofness, and a somewhat similar impression from Leslie's manner, when they met in Fifth Avenue one day, was always in her mind. They could drop her as easily as they had picked her up, these high-and-mighty Melroses! She consoled herself, for a few days, with spectacular fancies of Annie's consternation should Norma's real ident.i.ty be suddenly revealed to her, but even that poor solace was taken away from her at last.

It was Aunt Kate's unconscious hand that struck the blow, on a wild afternoon, All Hallow E'en, as it happened, when the older woman made the long trip to see Rose, and came on to Norma with a report that everything was going well, and Miggs more fascinating than ever.

Mrs. Sheridan found Norma at the close of the short afternoon, moping in her unlighted house. She had been to the theatre with Wolf and a young couple from the house next door, last night, and had fallen asleep after an afternoon walk, and felt headachy, p.r.i.c.kly with heat and cold, and stupid. Yawning and chilly, she kissed her aunt, and suggested that they move to the kitchen. It was Inga's free night and Norma was cook.

"You'll stay and surprise Wolf, he'd love it," Norma said, as the visitor's approving eyes noted the general order and warmth, the blue-checked towels and blue bowls, the white table and white walls. The little harum-scarum baby of the family was proceeding to get her husband a most satisfactory and delicious little dinner, and Aunt Kate was proud of her.

"Did you make that cake, darling?"

"Indeed I did; she can't make cake!"

"And the ham?"

"Well"--Norma eyed the cut ham fondly--"we did that together, out of the book! And I wish you'd taste it, Aunt Kate, it is perfectly delicious. I give it to Wolf every other night, but I think he'd eat it three times a day and be delighted. And last week we made bread--awfully good, too--not hard like that bread we made last summer. Rolls, we made--cinnamon rolls and plain. Harry and Rose were here. And Thanksgiving I'm going to try mincemeat."

"You're a born cook," Aunt Kate said, paying one of her highest compliments with due gravity. But Norma did not respond with her usual buoyancy. She sighed impatiently, and her face fell into lines of discontent and sadness that did not escape the watching eyes. Mrs.

Sheridan changed the subject to the one of a cousin of Harry Redding, one Mrs. Barry with whose problems Norma was already dismally familiar.

Mrs. Barry's husband was sick in a hospital, and she herself had to have an expensive operation, and the smallest of the four children had some trouble hideously like infantile paralysis.

Norma knew that Aunt Kate would have liked to have her offer to take at least one of the small and troublesome children for two or three days, if not to stay with the unfortunate Kitty Barry outright. She knew that there was almost no money, that all the household details of washing and cooking were piling up like a mountain about the ailing woman, but her heart was filled with sudden rebellion and impatience with the whole miserable scheme.

"My goodness, Aunt Kate, if it isn't one thing with those people it's another!" she said, impatiently. "I suppose you were there, and up with that baby all night!"

"Indeed I got some fine sleep," Mrs. Sheridan answered, innocently.

"Poor things, they're very brave!"

Norma said nothing, but her expression was not sympathetic. She had been thinking of herself as to be pitied, and this ruthless introduction of the Barry question entirely upset the argument. If Mary Bishop and Katrina Thayer were the standard, then Norma Sheridan's life was too utterly obscure and insignificant to be worth living. But of course if incompetent strugglers like the Barrys were to be brought into the question, then Norma might begin to feel the solid ground melting from beneath her feet.

She did not offer the cake or the ham to Aunt Kate, as contributions toward the small Barrys' lunch next day, nor did she invite any one of them to visit her. Her aunt, if she noted these omissions, made no comment upon them.

"I declare you are getting to be a real woman, Norma," she said.

"I suppose everyone grows up," Norma a.s.sented, cheerlessly.

"Yes, there's a time when a child stops being a baby and you see that it's beginning to be a little girl," Mrs. Sheridan mused; "but it's some time later before you know _what sort_ of a little girl it is. And then at--say fifteen or sixteen--you see the change again, the little girl growing into a grown girl--a young lady. And for awhile you sort of lose track of her again, until all of a sudden you say: 'Well, Norma's going to be sociable--and like people!' or: 'Rose is going to be a gentle, shy girl----'"

Norma knew the mildly moralizing tone, and that she was getting a sermon.

"You never knew that I was going to be a good housekeeper!" she a.s.serted, inclined toward contrariety.

"I think you're going through another change now, Baby," her aunt said.

"You've become a woman too fast. You don't quite know where you are!"

This was so unexpectedly acute that Norma was inwardly surprised, and a little impressed. She sat down at one end of the clean little kitchen table, and rested her face in her hands, and looked resentfully at the older woman.

"Then you _don't_ think I'm a good housekeeper," she said, looking hurt.

"I think you will be whatever you want to be, Norma, it'll all be in your hands now," Mrs. Sheridan answered, seriously. "You're a woman, now; you're Wolf's wife; you've reached an age when you can choose and decide for yourself. You can be--you always could be--the best child the Lord ever made, or you can fret and brood over what you haven't got."

The shrewd kindly eye seemed looking into Norma's very soul. The girl dropped her hard bright stare, and looked sulky.

"I don't see what _I'm_ doing!" she muttered. "I can't help wanting--what other people that are no better than I, have!"

"Yes, but haven't you enough, Norma? Think of women like poor Kitty Barry----"

"Oh, Kitty Barry--Kitty Barry!" Norma burst out, angrily. "It isn't my fault that Kitty Barry has trouble; _I_ had nothing to do with it! Look at people like Leslie--what she wastes on one new fur coat would keep the Barrys for a year! Eighty-two hundred dollars she paid for her birthday coat! And that's _nothing_! Katrina Thayer----"

"Norma--Norma--Norma!" her aunt interrupted, reproachfully. "What have you to do with girls like the Thayer girl? Why, there aren't twenty girls in the country as rich as that. That doesn't affect _you_, if there's something you can do for the poor and unfortunate----"

"It _does_ affect me! I can't"--Norma dropped her tone, and glanced at her aunt. She knew that she was misbehaving--"I can't help inheriting a love for money," she said, breathing hard. "I know perfectly well who I am--who my mother is," she ended, with a half-defiant and half-fearful sob in her voice.

"How do you mean that you know about your mother, Norma?" Mrs. Sheridan demanded, sharply.

"Well"--Norma had calmed a little, and she was a trifle nervous--"Chris told me; and Aunt Alice knows, too--that Aunt Annie is my mother," she said.

"Chris Liggett told you that?" Mrs. Sheridan asked, with a note of incredulity in her voice.

"Yes. Aunt Alice guessed it almost as soon as I went to live there! And I've known it for over a year," Norma said.

"And who told Chris?"

"Well--Aunt Marianna, I suppose!"

There was silence for a moment.

"Norma," said Mrs. Sheridan, in a quiet, convincing tone that cooled the girl's hot blood instantly, "Chris is entirely wrong; your mother is dead. I've never lied to you, and I give you my word! I don't know where Miss Alice got that idea, but it's like her romantic way of fancying things! No, dear," she went on, sympathetically, as Norma sat silent, half-stunned by painful surprise, "you have no claim on Miss Annie. Both your father and mother are dead, Norma; I knew them both. There was a reason," Mrs. Sheridan added, thoughtfully, "why I felt that Mrs.

Melrose might want to be kind to you--want to undo an injustice she did years ago. But I've told myself a thousand times that I did you a cruel wrong when I first let you go among them--you who were always so sensible, and so cheerful, and who would always take things as they came, and make no fuss!"

"Oh, Aunt Kate," Norma stammered, bitterly, her lip trembling, and her voice fighting tears, "you don't have to tell me that in your opinion I've changed for the worse--I see it in the way you look at me! You've always thought Rose was an angel--too good to live!--and that I was spoiled and lazy and good-for-nothing; you were glad enough to get rid of me, and now I hope you're satisfied! They've told me one thing, and you've told me another--and I guess the truth is that I don't belong to anybody; and I wish I was dead, where my f-f-father and m-m-mother are----!"

And stumbling into incoherence and tears, Norma dropped her head on her arm, and sobbed bitterly. Mrs. Sheridan's face was full of pain, but she did not soften.

"You belong to your husband, Norma!" she said, mildly.

Norma sat up, and wiped her eyes on a little handkerchief that she took from the pocket of her housewifely blue ap.r.o.n. She did not meet her aunt's eye, and still looked angry and hurt.

"Well--who _am_ I then? Haven't I got some right to know who my mother and father were?" she demanded.

"That you will never hear from me," Mrs. Sheridan replied, firmly.

"But, Aunt Kate----"

"I gave my solemn promise, Norma, and I've kept my word all these years; I'm not likely to break it now."