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The Beloved Woman, a novel by Kathleen Thompson Norris |
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Chapter 19 |
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_ CHAPTER XIX Wolf walked with her to the omnibus. He had come in tired with the heat of the long day, but Norma thought him his sweetest self, brotherly, good, unsuspicious, and unaffected. He complimented her on her appearance; he had a kind word for Harry Redding, for the baby; he told Norma that he and his mother had gone to Portland by water a few weeks before and had a great spree. Norma, tired and excited, loved him for his very indifference to her affairs and her mood, for the simplicity with which he showed her the book he was reading, and the amusement he found all along the dry and dusty and dirty street. Everything was interesting to Wolf, and he made no apologies for the general wiltedness and disorder of the neighbourhood. Norma looked down at him, from the top of the omnibus, and thought that he was a friendly and likable big young man, with his rumpled bare head shining reddish-brown in the streaming, merciless sunlight. She had no idea that his last look at her was like some precious canvas that a collector adds to his treasures, that to the thousands of little-girl Normas, and bookshop Normas, and to the memorable picture of a debutante Norma at her first opera, Wolf carried away with him to-night one more Norma: a brown, self-possessed, prettier-than-ever Norma, in a wide English hat and a plain linen suit, and transparent green silk stockings that matched her green silk parasol. She got down from the omnibus, a few blocks farther away, and walked slowly along the shady side of the burning cross-streets, thinking, thinking, thinking. It was the hottest hour of the afternoon; there would be a storm to-night, but just now the air hung motionless, and the shadows were almost as dazzling, in their baking dimness, as the sunshine. Houses were closed and silent, show windows bare; the omnibuses creaked by loaded with passengers, trying to get cool. There was an odour of frying potatoes; other odours, stale and lifeless, crept through the stale and lifeless air. Norma was entirely familiar with this phase of city life, for, except for Sundays at Coney Island, or picnicking on some beach or in some meadow or wood of Connecticut, she and the Sheridans had weathered two successive hot seasons very comfortably within two hundred yards of Broadway. It held no particular horrors for her; she reflected that in another hour or two the sun would quite have died away, and then every flight of old brownstone steps would hold its chatting group, and every street its scores of screaming and running children. Wherever her thoughts carried her, they began and ended with Christopher. He had never kissed her again after the night of his return from Miami; he had hardly touched even her hand, and he had said no word of love. But, as the summer progressed, these two had grown steadily to live more and more for each other, for just the casual friendly looks and words of ordinary intercourse in the presence of other persons, and for the chance hours that Fate now and then permitted them alone. Norma, in every other relationship grown more whimsical and more restless, showing new phases of frivolity and shallowness to the world, had deepened and developed, under Chris's eyes, into her own highest possibility of womanhood. To him she was earnest, honest, only anxious to be good and to be true. He knew the viewpoint of that wiser self that was the real Norma; he knew how wide open those blue eyes were to what was false and worthless in the world around her. And Norma had seen him change, too, or perhaps more truly become himself. Still apparently the old Chris, handsome, poised, cynical, and only too ready to be bored, he went his usual course of golf and polo, gave his men's dinners, kissed Alice good-bye and departed for yachting or motoring trips. Even Alice, shut away from reality in her own world of music and sweet airs, flowers and friendship, saw no change. But Norma saw it. She knew that Chris was no longer ready to respond to every pretty woman's idle challenge to a flirtation; she knew that there was a Chris of high ideals, a Chris capable even of heroism, a Chris who loved simplicity, who loved even service, and who was not too spoiled and too proud to give his time as well as his money, to give himself gladly where he saw the need. Their hours alone together were hours of enchanting discovery. Memories of the little boy that had been Chris, the little girl that had been Norma, their hopes and ambitions and joys and sorrows, all were exchanged. And to them both every word seemed of thrilling and absorbing interest. To Norma life now was a different thing when Chris merely was in the room, however distant from her, however apparently interested in someone, or something, else. She knew that he was conscious of her, thinking of her, and that presently she would have just the passing word, or smile, or even quiet glance that would buoy her hungry soul like a fresh and powerful current. It was not strange to her that she should have come to feel him the most vital and most admirable of all the persons about her, for many of the men and women who loved Chris shared this view. Norma had not been in the Melrose house a month before she had heard him called "wonderful", "inimitable", "the only Chris", a hundred times. Even, she told herself sometimes, even the women that Chris quite openly disliked would not return coldness for coldness. And how much less could she, so much younger, resist the generous friendship he offered to her ignorance, and awkwardness, and strangeness? That he saw in her own companionship something to value she had at first been slow to believe. Sheer pride had driven her to reluctance, to shyness, to unbelief. But that was long ago, months ago. Norma knew now that he truly liked her, that the very freshness and unconventionality of her viewpoint delighted him, and that he gave her a frankness, a simpleness, and an ardour, in his confidences, that would have astonished Alice herself. Alice! Norma was thinking of Alice, now. Just where did Alice come in? Alice had always been the most generous of wives. But she could not be generous here; no human woman could. She liked Norma, in a sense she needed Norma, but Chris was all her world. "But, good heavens!" Norma mused, as she walked slowly along, "isn't there to be any friendship for a man but his men friends, or any for a woman except unmarried men? Isn't there friendship at all between the sexes? Must it always be sneaking and subterfuge, unless it's marriage? I don't want to marry Chris Liggett----" She stopped short, and the blood left her heart suddenly, and rushed back with a pounding that almost dizzied her. "_I don't want to marry Chris Liggett_," she whispered, aloud. And then she widened her eyes at space, and walked on blindly for a little way. "Oh, Chris, Chris, Chris!" she said. "Oh, what shall I do?" An agony almost physical in its violence seized her, and she began to move more rapidly, as if to wear it out, or escape it. "No, no, no; I can't care for him in that way," said Norma, feeling her throat dry and her head suddenly aching. "We can't--we cannot--like each other that way!" The rest of the walk was a blank as far as her consciousness was concerned. She was swept far away, on a rushing sea of memories, memories confused and troubled by a vague apprehension of the days to come. That was it; that was it; they loved each other. Not as kinspeople, not as friends, not as the Chris and Norma of Alice's and Leslie's and Annie's lives, but as man and woman, caught at last in the old, old snare that is the strongest in life. Bewildered and sick, she reached the cool, great colonnaded doorway of the hotel. And here she and Christopher came face to face. He was coming out, was indeed halfway down the stone steps. They stood still and looked at each other. Norma thought that he looked tired, that perhaps the hot week in streets and offices had been hard for him. He was pale, and the smile he gave her was strained and unnatural. They had not seen each other for ten days, and Norma, drinking in every expression of the firm mouth, the shrewd, kindly eyes, the finely set head, felt sudden confidence and happiness flood her being again. It was all nonsense, this imagining of hers, and she and Chris would always be the best friends in the world! "Alice is perfectly splendid," Norma said, in answer to his first questions, "and Leslie's baby is much less fat and solid looking, and getting to be so cunning. Where is Aunt Marianna?" "Upstairs," he answered with a slight backward inclination of his head. "We had a most satisfactory day, and you and she can get off to Great Barrington to-morrow without any trouble." "She and I?" Norma said, distressed by something cold and casual in his manner. "But aren't you coming, too? Alice depends upon your coming!" "I can't, I'm sorry to say. I may get up on Friday night," Chris said, with an almost weary air of politeness. "Friday! Why, then--then I'll persuade Aunt Marianna to wait," Norma decided, eagerly. "You must come with us, Chris; it's quite lovely up through Connecticut!" "I'm very sorry," the man repeated, glancing beyond her as if in a hurry to terminate the conversation. "But I may not get up at all this week. And I've arranged with Aunt Marianna that Poole drives you up to-morrow. You'll find her," he added, lightly, "enthusiastic over the baby's pictures. They're really excellent, and I think Leslie will be delighted. And now I have to go, Norma----" "But you're coming back to have dinner with us?" the girl interrupted, thoroughly uneasy at the change in him. "Not to-night. I have an engagement! Good-bye. I'll see you very soon. The hat's charming, Norma, I think you may safely order more of them by mail if you have to. Good-bye." And with another odd smile, and his usually courteous bow, he was gone, and Norma was left staring after him in a state almost of stupefaction. What was the matter with him? The question framed itself indignantly in Norma's mind as she automatically crossed the foyer of the hotel and went upstairs. Mechanically, blindly, she took off the big hat, flung aside the parasol, and went through the uniting bathroom into Mrs. Melrose's room. What on earth had been the matter with Chris? What right had he--how dared he--treat her so rudely? Mrs. Melrose was in a flowered chair near a wide-opened window. She had put on a lacy robe of thin silk, after the heat and burden of the day, and her feet were in slippers. Beside her was a tall glass, holding an iced drink, and before her, on a small table, Regina had ranged the beautiful photographs of Leslie's baby that were to be the young mother's birthday surprise next week. "Hello, dear!" she said, in the pleasant, almost cooing voice with which she almost always addressed the girls of the family, "isn't this just a dreadful, dreadful day? Oh, my, so hot! Look here, Norma, just see my little Patricia's pictures. Aren't they perfectly lovely? I'm _so_ pleased with them. I was just----Regina, will you order Miss Norma something cool to drink, please. Tea, dear? Or lemonade, like your old aunty?--I was just showing them to Chris. Yes. And he thought they were just perfectly lovely; see the little fat hand, and how beautifully the lace took! There--that one's the best. You'll see, Leslie will like that one." The topic, fortunately for Norma's agitation, was apparently inexhaustible and all-absorbing. The girl could sink almost unnoticed into an opposite chair, and while her voice dutifully uttered sympathetic monosyllables, and her eyes went from the portraits of little Patricia idly about the big room, noting the handsome old maple furniture, and the costly old scrolled velvet carpet, and the aspect of flaming roofs beyond the window in the sunset, her thoughts could turn and twist agonizingly over this new mystery and this new pain. What had been the matter with Chris? Anger gave way to chill, and chill to utter heartsickness. The cause of the change was unimportant, after all; it was the change itself that was significant. Norma's head ached, her heart was like lead. She had been thinking, all the way down in the car--all to-day--that she would meet him to-night; that they would talk. Now what? Was this endless evening to drag away on his terms, and were they to return to Newport to-morrow, with only the memory of that cool farewell to feed Norma's starving, starving soul? "Chris couldn't stay and have dinner," Mrs. Melrose presently was regretting, "but, after all, perhaps it's cooler up here than anywhere, and I am so tired that I'm not going to change! You'll just have to stand me as I am." And the tired, heat-flushed, wrinkled old face, under its fringe of gray hair, smiled confidently at Norma. The girl smiled affectionately back. Five o'clock. Six o'clock. It was almost seven when Norma came forth from a cold bath, and supervised the serving of the little meal. She merely played with her own food, and the old lady was hardly more hungry. "Oh, no, Aunt Marianna! I think that Leslie was just terribly nervous, after Patricia was born. But I think now, especially when they're back in their own house, they'll be perfectly happy. No reason in the world why they shouldn't be," Norma heard herself saying. So they had been talking of Acton and Leslie, she thought. Leslie was spoiled, and Acton was extravagant, and the united families had been just a little worried about their attitudes toward each other. Mrs. Melrose was sure that Norma was right, and rambled along the same topic for some time. Then Norma realized that they had somehow gotten around to Theodore, Leslie's father. This subject was always good for half hours together, she could safely ramble a little herself. The deadly weight fell upon her spirit again. What had been the matter with Chris? At nine o'clock her tired old companion began preparations for bed, and Norma, catching up some magazines, went into her own room. She could hear Regina and Mrs. Melrose murmuring together, the running of water, the opening and shutting of bureau drawers. Norma went to her open window, leaned out into the warm and brilliant night. There was a hot moon, moving between clouds that promised, at last, a break in the binding heat. Down the Avenue below her omnibuses wheeled and rumbled, omnibuses whose upper seats were packed with thinly clad passengers, but otherwise there was little life and movement abroad. A searchlight fanned the sky, fell and wavered upward again. A hurdy-gurdy, in the side street, poured forth the notes of the "Marseillaise." Suddenly, and almost without volition, the girl snatched the telephone, and murmured a number. Thought and senses seemed suspended while she waited. "Is this the Metropolitan Club? Is Mr. Christopher Liggett there?... If you will, please. Thank you. Say that it is a lady," said Norma, in a hurried and feverish voice. The operator would announce presently, of course, that Mr. Liggett was not there. The chance that he was there was so remote---- "Chris!" she breathed, all the tension and doubt dropping from her like a garment at the sound of his quiet tones. "Chris--this is Norma!" A pause. Her soul died within her. "What is it?" Chris asked presently, in a repressed voice. "Well--but were you playing cards?" "No." "You've had your dinner, Chris?" "No. Yes, I had dinner, of course. I dined with Aunt Marianna--no, that was lunch! I dined here." "Chris," Norma faltered, speaking quickly as her courage ebbed, "I didn't want to interrupt you, but you seemed so--so different, this afternoon. And I didn't want to have you cross at me; and I wondered--I've been wondering ever since--if I have done something that made you angry--that was stupid and--and----" She stopped. The forbidding silence on his part was like a wall that crossed her path, was like a veil that blinded and choked her. "Not at all," he said, quickly. "Where did you get that idea?... Hello--hello--are you there, Norma?" he added, when on her part in turn there was a blank silence. For Norma, strangled by an uprising of tears as sudden as it was unexpected and overwhelming, could make no audible answer. Why she should be crying she could not clearly think, but she was bathed in tears, and her heart was heavy with unspeakable desolation. "Norma!" she heard him say, urgently. "What is it? Norma----?" "Nothing!" she managed to utter, in a voice that stemmed the flood for only a second. "Norma," Chris said, simply, "I am coming out. Meet me downstairs in ten minutes. I want to see you!" Both telephones clicked, and Norma found herself sitting blankly in the sudden silence of the room, her brain filled with a confusion of shamed and doubting and fearful thoughts, and her heart flooded with joy. Five minutes later she stepped from the elevator into the lobby, and selected a big chair that faced obliquely on the entrance doors. The little stir in the wide, brightly lighted place always interested her and amused her; women drifting from the dining-room with their light wraps over their arms, messengers coming and going, the far strains of the orchestra mingling pleasantly with the nearer sounds of feet and voices. To-night her spirit was soaring. Nothing mattered, nothing of her doubts, nothing of his coldness, except that Chris was even now coming toward her! Her mind followed the progress of his motor-car, up through the hot, deserted streets. Suddenly it seemed to her that she could not bear the emotion of meeting. With every man's figure that came through the wide-open doors her heart thumped and pounded. His voice; she would hear it again. She would see the gray eyes, and watch the firm, quick movement of his jaw. Other men, meeting other women, or parting from other women, came and went. Norma liked the big, homely boy in olive drab, who kissed the little homely mother so affectionately. She glanced at her wrist watch, twisted about to confirm its unwelcome news by the big clock. Quarter to ten, and no Chris. Norma settled down again to waiting and watching. Ten o'clock. Quarter past ten. He was not coming! No, although her sick and weary spirit rose whenever there was the rush of a motor-car to the curb or the footstep of a man on the steps outside, she knew now that he was not coming. Hope deferred had exhausted her, but hope dead was far, far worse. He was not coming. It was almost half-past ten when a bell-boy approached. Was it Miss Sheridan? Mr. Christopher Liggett had been called out of town, and would try to see Mrs. Melrose in a day or two. Norma turned upon him a white face of fatigue. "Is Mr. Liggett on the telephone?" "No, Miss. He just telephoned a message." The boy retired, and Norma went slowly upstairs, and slowly made her preparations for sleep. But the blazing summer dawn, smiting the city at four o'clock, found her still sitting at the window, twirling a tassel of the old-fashioned shade in her cold fingers, and staring with haggard eyes into space. _ |
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