"Still, it's true," Norma mused, darkly. "Only we seem unable to speak the truth in this house! Well, I'm stifling here----"

She had been leaning out of the open window, the night was soft and warm. Norma looked at her wrist watch; it was nine o'clock. A sudden mad impulse took her: she would go over to Jersey, and see Rose. It was not so very late, the babies kept Rose and Harry up until almost eleven. She thirsted suddenly for Rose, for Rose's beautiful, pure little face, her puzzled, earnest blue eyes under black eyebrows, her pleasant, unready words that were always so true and so kind.

Rapidly Norma b.u.t.toned the new black coat, dropped the filmy veil, fled down the back stairway, and through a bright, hot pantry, where maids were laughing and eating gaily. She explained to their horrified silence that she was slipping out for a breath of air, went through doorways and gratings, and found herself in the blessed coolness and darkness of the side street.

Ah--this was delicious! She belonged here, flying along inconspicuous and unmolested in light and darkness, just one of the hurrying and indifferent millions. The shop windows, the subways, the very gum-machines and the chestnut ovens with their blowing lamps looked friendly to Norma to-night; she loved every detail of blowing newspapers and yawning fellow-pa.s.sengers, in the hot, bright tube.

On the other side she was hurrying off the train with the plunging crowd when her heart jumped wildly at the sight of a familiar shabby overcoat some fifty feet ahead of her, topped by the slightly tipped slouch hat that Wolf always wore. Friday night! her thoughts flashed joyously, and he was coming to New Jersey to see his mother and Rose! Of all fortunate accidents--the one person in the world she wanted to see--and must see now!

Norma fled after the coat, dodging and slipping through every opening, and keeping the rapidly moving slouch hat before her. She was quite out of breath when she came abreast of the man, and saw, with a sickening revulsion, that it was not Wolf.

What the man thought Norma never knew or cared. The surprising blankness of the disappointment made her almost dizzy; she turned aside blindly, and stumbled into the quiet backwater behind a stairway, where she could recover her self-possession and endure un.o.bserved the first pangs of bitterness. It seemed to her that she would die if she could not see Wolf, if she had to endure another minute of loneliness and darkness and aimless wandering through the night.

Rose's house was only three well-lighted blocks from the station; Norma almost ran them. Other houses, she noted, were still brightly lighted at quarter to eleven o'clock, and Rose's might be. Aunt Kate was there, and she and Rose might well be sitting up, with the restless smaller baby, or to finish some bit of sewing.

It was a double house, and the windows that matched Rose's bedroom and dining-room were lighted in the wrong half. But all Rose's side was black and dark and silent.

Norma, for the first time in her life, needed courage for the knocking and ringing and explaining. If they would surely be kind to her, she might chance it, she thought. But if Aunt Kate was angry with her vacillations in regard to Wolf, and if Rose had also taken Wolf's side, then she knew that she, Norma, would begin to cry, and disgrace herself, and have good-natured simple old Harry poking about and wondering what was the matter----

No, she didn't dare risk it. So she waited in the little garden, looking up at the windows, praying that little Harry would wake up, or that the baby's little acid wail would drift through the open window, and then the dim light bloom suddenly, and show a silhouette of Rose, tall and sweet in her wrapper, with a great rope of braid falling over one shoulder.

But moments went by, and there was no sound. Norma went to the street lamp a hundred feet away and looked at her wrist watch. Quarter past eleven; it was useless to wait any longer; it had been a senseless quest from the beginning.

She went back to the city by train and boat, crying desolately in the darkness above the ploughing of the invisible waters. She cried with pity for herself, for it seemed to her that life was very unfair to her.

"Is it _my_ fault that I inherit all that money?" she asked the dark night angrily. "Is it my fault that I love Chris Liggett? Isn't it better to be honest about it than live with a man I don't love? Isn't that the worst thing that woman can endure--a loveless marriage?

"But that's just the High School Debating Society!" she interrupted herself, suddenly, using a phrase that she and Wolf had coined long ago for glib argument that is untouched by actual knowledge of life.

"Loveless marriage--and wife in name only! I wonder if I am getting to be one of the women who throw those terms about as an excuse for just sheer selfishness and stupidity!"

And her aunt's phrases came back to her, making her wonder unhappily just where the trouble lay, just what sort of a woman she was.

"I think you will be whatever you want to be, Norma," Mrs. Sheridan had said, "you're a woman now--you're Wolf's wife----"

But that was just what she did not feel herself, a woman and Wolf's wife. She was a girl--interested in s.h.a.ggy sport coats and lace stockings; she did not want to be any one's wife! She wanted to punish Leslie and Aunt Annie, and to have plenty of money, and to have a wonderful little apartment on the east side of the Park, and delicious clothes; she wanted to become a well-known figure in New York society, at Palm Beach and the summer resorts, and at the opera and the big dining-rooms of the hotels.

"And I could do it, too!" Norma thought, walking through the cool, dark night restlessly. "In two years--in three or four, anyway, I would be where Aunt Annie is; or at least I would if Chris and I were married--he could do anything! I suppose," she added, with youthful recklessness, "I suppose there are lots of old fogies who would never understand my getting separated from Wolf, but it isn't as if _he_ didn't understand, for I know he does! Wolf has always known that it took just _certain things_ to make me happy!"

Something petty, and contemptible, and unworthy, in this last argument smote her ears unpleasantly, and she was conscious of flushing in the dark.

"Well, people have to be happy, don't they?" she reasoned, with a rising inflection at the end of the phrase that surprised and a trifle disquieted her. "Don't they?" she asked herself, thoughtfully, as she crept in at the side door of the magnificent, c.u.mbersome old house that was her own now. No one but an amazed-looking maid saw her, as she regained her room, and fifteen minutes later she was circulating about the dim and mournful upper floor again. Annie called her into her room.

"You look fearfully tired, Norma! Do get some sleep," her aunt said, with unusual kindness. "I'm going to try to, although my head is aching terribly, and I know I can't. To-morrow will be hard on us all. I shall go home to-morrow night, and I'm trying to persuade Leslie to come with me."

"No, I shan't! I'm going to stay here," Leslie said, with a sort of weary pettishness. "My house is closed, and poor Chris is going to begin closing Aunt Alice's house, and he doesn't want to go to a club--he'd much rather be here, wouldn't he, Norma?"

Something in the tired way that both aunt and niece appealed to her touched Norma, and she answered sympathetically:

"Truly, I think he would, Aunt Annie. And if little Patricia and the nurse get here on Sunday, she won't be lonely."

"Norma, why don't you stay here, too--your husband's in Philadelphia,"

Leslie asked her. "Do! We shall have so much to do----"

"We haven't seen the will, but I believe Judge Lee is going to bring it on Wednesday," Annie said, "and Chris said that Mama left you--well, I don't know what! I wish you could arrange to stay the rest of the week, at least!"

"I will!" Norma agreed. She had been feeling neglected and lonely, and this unexpected friendliness was heartwarming.

"You've been a real comfort," Annie said, good-naturedly. "You're such a sensible child, Norma. I hope one of these days--afterward"--and Annie faintly indicated with her eyebrows the direction of the front room from which the funeral procession would start to-morrow--"afterward, that you'll let us know your husband better. And now it's long past midnight, girls, and you ought to be in bed!"

It was mere casual civility on Annie's part, as accidental as had been her casual unkindness a few hours before. But it lifted Norma's heart, and she went out into the hall in a softer frame of mind than she had known for a long time. She managed another word with Chris before going to her room for almost nine hours of reviving and restoring sleep.

"Chris, I feel terribly about breaking this news to Aunt Annie and Leslie while they feel so badly about Aunt Alice and Aunt Marianna!" she said. Again Chris gave the hallway, where she had met him, a quick, uneasy scrutiny before he answered her:

"Well, of course! But it can't be helped."

"But do you think that we could put it off until Wednesday, Chris, when the will is to be read? Everyone will be here then, and it would seem a good time to do it!"

"Yes," he consented, after a moment's thought, "I think that is a good idea!" And so they left it.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

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 cortege 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 c.r.a.pe-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 cla.s.ses, 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----"