Chapter 30

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_ CHAPTER XXX

So matters went on for another ten days. Then suddenly, on a mid-week afternoon, Norma, walking home from a luncheon in a wild and stormy wind, was amazed to see the familiar, low-slung roadster waiting outside her aunt's door when she reached the steps. Chris jumped out and came to meet her as she looked bewilderedly toward it, a Chris curiously different in manner from the man she had left only an hour ago.

"Norma!" he said, quickly, "I found a message when I got to the office. I was to call up Aunt Marianna's house at once. She's ill--_very_ ill. They want me, and they want you!"

"Me?" she echoed, blankly. "What for?"

"She's had a stroke," he said, still with that urgent and hurried air, "and Joseph--poor old fellow, he was completely broken up--said that she had been begging them to get hold of you!"

Norma had gotten into the familiar front seat, but now she stayed him with a quick hand.

"Wait a minute, Chris, I'll run up and tell Aunt Kate where I am going!" she said.

"She's gone out. There's nobody there!" he assured her, glancing up at the apartment windows. "I knew you would be coming in, so I waited."

"Then I'll telephone!" the girl said, settling herself again. "But what do you suppose she wants me for?" she asked, returning to the subject of the summons. "Have they--will they--send for Aunt Annie and Leslie, do you suppose?"

"Leslie is in Florida with the Binneys, most unfortunately. Annie was in Baltimore yesterday, but I believe she was expected home to-day. Joseph said he had gotten hold of Hendrick von Behrens, and I told my clerk to get Acton, and to warn Miss Slater that Alice isn't to be frightened."

"But, Chris--do you suppose she is dying?"

"I don't know--one never does, of course, with paralysis."

"Poor Aunt Alice--it will almost kill her!"

"Yes, it will be terribly hard for her, harder than for any one," he answered. And Norma loved him for the grave sympathy that filled his voice, and for the poise that could make such a speech possible, under the circumstances, without ever a side glance for her.

Then they reached the old house, ran up the steps, and were in the great dark hallway that already seemed to be filled with the shadow of change.

Whispering, solemn-faced maids went to and fro; Joseph was red-eyed; the heavy fur coats of two doctors were flung upon chairs. Norma slipped from her own coat.

"How is she, Joseph?"

"I hardly know, Miss. You're to go up, please, and Regina was to tell one of the nurses at once that you had come, Miss." He delivered his message impassively enough, but then the human note must break through. "I've been with her since she was married, Miss--nigh forty years," the old man faltered, "and I'm afraid she is very bad--very bad, indeed!"

"Oh, I _hope_ not!" Norma went noiselessly upstairs, Chris close behind her. Did she hope not? She hardly knew. But she knew that all this was strangely thrilling--this rush through the tossing windy afternoon to the old house, this sense of being a part of the emergency, this utter departure from the tedious routine of life.

A serious-faced nurse took charge of them, and she and Chris followed her noiselessly into the familiar bedroom that yet looked so altered in its new lifeless order and emptiness. The clutter of personal possessions was already gone, chairs had been straightened and pushed back, and on the bed that had lately been frilled and embroidered in white and pink, and piled with foolish little transparent baby pillows, a fresh, flawless linen sheet was spread. Silence reigned in the wide chamber; but two doctors were standing by the window, and looked at the newcomers with interest, and a second nurse passed them on her way out. Norma vaguely noted the fire, burning clear and bright, the shaded light that showed a chart, on a cleared table, the absence of flowers and plants that made the place seem bare. But after one general impression her attention was riveted upon the sick woman, and with her heart beating quickly with fright she went to stand at the foot of the great walnut bed.

Mrs. Melrose was lying with her head tipped back in pillows; her usually gentle, soft old face looked hard and lined, and was a dark red, and the scanty gray hair, brushed back mercilessly from the temples, and devoid of the usual puffs and transformations, made her look her full sixty years. Her eyes were half-open, but she did not move them, her lips seemed very dry, and occasionally she muttered restlessly, and a third nurse, bending above her, leaned anxiously near, to catch what she said, and perhaps murmur a soothing response.

This nurse looked sharply at Norma, and breathed rather than whispered: "Mrs. Sheridan?" and when Norma answered with a nod, nodded herself in satisfaction.

"She's been asking and asking for you," she said, in a low clear tone that oddly broke the unnatural silence of the room. Norma, hearing a stir behind her, looked back to see that both doctors had come over to the bed, and were looking down at their patient with a profound concern that their gray heads and their big spectacles oddly emphasized.

"Mrs. Sheridan?" one of them questioned. Norma dared not use her voice, and nodded again. Immediately the doctor leaned over Mrs. Melrose, and said in a clear and encouraging tone: "Here is Mrs. Sheridan now!"

Mrs. Melrose merely moaned heavily in answer, and Norma said softly, to the doctor who had spoken:

"I think perhaps she was asking for my aunt--who is also Mrs. Sheridan!"

Before the doctor, gravely considering, could answer, the sick woman startled them all by saying, almost fretfully, in a surprisingly clear and quiet voice:

"No--no--no, I want you, Norma!"

She groped blindly about with her hand, as she spoke, and Norma kneeled down, and covered it with both her own. Mrs. Melrose immediately began to breathe more easily, and sank at once into the stupor from which she had only momentarily roused.

Norma looked for instruction to the doctor, who presently decided that there was nothing more to be gained for a time; she joined them presently, with Chris, in the adjoining room. This was the same old room of her first visit to the house, with the same rich old brocaded paper and fringed rep draperies, with the same pictures, and a few new ones, lined on the mantel.

"Where are Mrs. von Behrens and Leslie?" Doctor Murray, who had known all the family intimately for years, asked Chris.

"Is it so serious, Doctor?" Christopher asked in turn, when he had answered. The doctor, glancing toward the closed door, nodded gravely.

"A matter of a day or two," he said, looking at the other old doctor for confirmation. "She was apparently perfectly normal last night, went to bed at her usual hour," he said, "this morning she complained of her head, when the maid went in at ten, said that she must have hurt it--struck it against something. The maid, a sensible young woman, was uneasy, and telephoned for me. Unfortunately, I was in Westchester this morning, but I got here at about one o'clock and found her as she is now. She has had a stroke--probably several slight shocks."

"Why, but she was perfectly well day before yesterday!" Norma said, in amazement. "And only ten days ago she came back from Florida, and said that she never felt better!"

"That is frequently the history of the disease," the second doctor said, sagely. And, glancing at his watch, he added, "I don't think you will need me again, Doctor Murray?"

"What are the chances of her--knowing anybody?" Chris asked.

"She may very probably have another lucid interval," Doctor Murray said. "If Mrs. Sheridan could arrange to stay, it would be advisable. She asked for her daughters, but she seemed even more anxious that we should send for--_you_." He glanced at Norma, with a little old-fashioned bow.

Mrs. Sheridan could stay, of course. She would telephone home, and advise Aunt Kate, at once. Indeed, so keen was Norma's sense almost of enjoyment in this thrilling hour that she would have been extremely sorry to leave the house. It was sad, it was dreadful, of course, to think that poor old Aunt Marianna was so ill, but at the same time it was most dramatic. She and Chris settled themselves before the fire in the upstairs sitting-room with Doctor Murray, who entertained them with mild reminiscences of the Civil War. The storm was upon the city now, rain slashed at the windows and the wind howled bitterly.

There was whispering in the old house, quiet footsteps, muffled voices at the door and telephone. At about six o'clock Chris went home, to tell Alice, with what tenderness he might, of the impending sorrow. Regina, who had been weeping bitterly, and would speak to no one, brought Norma and the doctor two smoking hot cups of bouillon on a tray.

"And you mustn't get tired, Mrs. Sheridan," one of the nurses, herself healthily odorous of a beef and apple-pie dinner, said kindly to Norma, at about seven o'clock. "There'll be coffee and sandwiches all night. This is a part of our lives, you know, and we get used to it, but it's hard for those not accustomed to it."

At about nine o'clock in the evening Chris came back. Alice had received the news bravely, he said; there had been no hysteria and she kept admirable control of herself, and he had left her ready for sleep. But it had hit her very hard. Miss Slater had promised him that she would put a sleeping powder into Alice's regular ten o'clock glass of hot milk, and let him know when she was safely off.

"She is very thankful that you are here, she was uneasy every instant that I stayed away!" he said softly to Norma, and Norma nodded her approval. Long before eleven o'clock they had the report that Alice was sleeping soundly under the combined effect of the powder and Miss Slater's repeated and earnest assurance that there was no immediate danger as regarded her mother.

Chris and Norma and the doctor and two of the nurses went down to the dining-room, and had sandwiches and coffee, and talked long and sadly of the briefness and mutability of mortal life. When they went upstairs again the doctor stretched out for some rest, on the sitting-room couch, and Norma went to her own old room, and got into her comfortable, thick padded wrapper and warm slippers. The night was still wet and stormy, and had turned cold. Hail rattled on the window sills.

Then she crept into the sick-room, and joined the nurses in their unrelenting vigil. Mrs. Melrose was still lying back, her eyes half-open, her face darkly flushed, her lips moving in an incoherent mutter. Now and then they caught the syllables of Norma's name, and once she said "Kate!" so sharply that everyone in the sick chamber started.

Norma, leaning back in a great chair by the bed, mused and pondered as the slow hours went by. The softened lights touched the nurses' crisp aprons, the fire was out now, and only the two softly palpitating disks from the shaded lamps dimly illumined the room.

Annie and Theodore and Alice had all been born in this very room, Norma thought. She imagined Aunt Marianna, a handsome, stout, radiant young woman, in the bustles and pleats of the early eighties, with the flowing ruffles of Theodore's christening robe spreading over her lap. How wonderful life must have seemed to her then, rich and young, and adored by her husband, and with her first-born child receiving all the homage due the heir of the great name and fortune! Then came Annie, and some years later Alice, and how busy and happy their mother must have been with plenty of money for schools and frocks, trips to the country with her handsome, imperious children; trips to Europe when no desire need be denied them, all the world the playground for the fortunate Melroses!

How short the perspective must look now, thought Norma, to that troubled brain that was struggling among closing shadows, nearer and nearer every slow clocktick to the end. How loathsome it must be to the prisoned spirit, this handsome, stifling room, this army of maids and nurses and doctors so decorously resigned to facing the last scene of all. Why, the poorest child in the city to-night, healthily asleep in some unspeakable makeshift for a bed, possessed what all the Melrose money could not buy for this moaning, suffocating old autocrat.

"I should like to die out on a hillside, under the stars," thought Norma, "with no one to watch me. This is--somehow--so horrible!"

And she crept toward the bed and slipped to her knees again, forcing herself against her inclination--for somehow prayers seemed to have nothing to do with this scene--to pray for the departing soul.

"Norma," the old lady said, suddenly, opening her eyes. She looked quietly and intelligently at the girl.

"Yes, dear!" Norma stammered, with a frightened glance toward the nurses.

These were instantly intent, at the bedside. But Mrs. Melrose paid no attention to them. She patted Norma's hand.

"Late for you, dear!" she whispered. "Night!" Obediently she drank something the nurse put to her lips, and when she spoke it was more clearly. A moment later Doctor Murray had her pulse between his nerveless fingers. She moved her eyes lazily to smile at him. "Tide running out, old friend!" she said, in a deep, rich voice. The doctor smiled, shaking his head, but Norma saw his eyes glisten behind his glasses.

Suddenly Mrs. Melrose frowned, and began to show excitement.

"Norma!" she said, quickly. "I want Chris!"

"Right here, Aunt Marianna!" Norma answered, soothingly. And Chris was indeed leaning over the bed almost before she finished speaking.

"I want to talk to you and Chris," the old lady said, contentedly closing her eyes. "Everybody else out!" she whispered.

The room was immediately cleared. "It can't hurt her now!" Doctor Murray looked rather than said to Norma as he passed her. Chris watched the closing doors, sat beside the bed's head with one arm half-supporting his mother-in-law's pillows.

"We're all alone, Aunt Marianna," he said. "Leslie and Annie will be here in the morning, and Alice told me to tell you that she hoped----"

"Chris," the sick woman interrupted, gazing at him with an intense and painful stare, "this child here--Norma! I--I must straighten it all out now, Chris. Kate knows. Kate has all the papers--letters--Louison's letters! Ask Kate----"

She shut her eyes. Norma and Chris looked at one another in bewilderment. There was a long silence.

"So now you know!" Mrs. Melrose said, presently, returning to full consciousness as naturally as she had before. "I told you, didn't I?" she asked, faintly anxious.

"Don't bother now, Aunt Marianna," the girl begged in distress. "To-morrow----"

"Louison," Mrs. Melrose said, "was Annie's French maid--very superior girl!"

"I remember her--Theodore's wife," Chris said, eager to help her.

"And she was this girl's mother," Mrs. Melrose added, clasping Norma's fingers. "You understand that, Chris?"

"Yes, darling--we understand!" Norma said, with a nod to Chris that he was to humour her. But Chris looked only strangely troubled.

"Annie's poor baby lived--Kate brought it home from France, and we named it Leslie," the invalid said, clearly. "I couldn't--I couldn't forget it, Chris. I used to go see it--at Kate's. And then, when it was three, I met Louison--poor girl, I had been cruel to her--and Theodore was far off in California--dying, we knew. And I met Louison in Brooklyn. And I had a sudden idea, Chris! I told her to go to Kate, and get Annie's baby, and bring it to me as if it was her own. I told her to! I told her to say that it was her baby--Theodore's baby. And she did, Chris, and I paid her well for it. She brought Leslie here, and Annie never knew--nobody ever knew! But I never knew that Louison had a baby of her own, Chris--I never knew that! Louison hated me, and she never told me she had a little girl. No--no--no, I never knew that!"

"Then Leslie--is--Annie's child by Mueller, the riding master!" Chris whispered, staring blindly ahead of him. "And what--what became of the other child--Theodore's child?"

"Louison kept her until she was five," the old lady explained, eagerly, "and then she wanted to marry again, and she had to go live in a wild sort of place, in Canada. She didn't want to take the little girl there, and she remembered Kate Sheridan, who had had the other baby, and who had been so good to it--so devoted to it! And she went there, Chris, and left her baby there."

"And that baby----" Chris began.

"Yes. That was Norma!" Mrs. Melrose said. "It is all Norma's, the whole thing--and you must take care that she gets it, Chris. I--even my will, dear, only gives Norma the Melrose Building and some bonds. But those are for Leslie, now, all the rest--the whole estate goes to Theodore's child--Norma. You must forgive me if I did it all wrong. I meant it for the best. I never knew that you were living, dear, until Kate brought you here three years ago. She didn't dare do it until your mother died; she had promised she would never tell a living soul. But Louison softened toward the end, and wrote Kate she must use her own judgment. And Kate--Kate--knows all about it----"

The voice thickened. The old lady raised herself in bed.

"That man--behind you, Chris!" she gasped. Chris put her down again, Norma flew for help. The muttering and the heavy breathing recommenced. Nurses and doctors ran back, Regina came to kneel at the foot of the bed.

Another slight stroke, they said later, when they were all about the fire in the next room again. Norma was white, her eyes glittering, her bitten lips scarlet in her colourless face. Chris looked stunned.

But he found time for just one aside, as the endless night wore on. Annie had arrived, superbly horrified and stricken, and Acton was there. Mrs. Melrose was still breathing. The sickly light of a winter morning was tugging at the shutters.

"Norma," Chris said, "do you realize what a tremendous thing has happened to you? Do you realize who you are? You are a rich woman now, my dear!"

"But do you believe it?" she asked, in a low tone.

"I know it is true! It explains everything," he answered. "It will be a cruel blow to Leslie--poor child, and Annie, too. Alice, I think, need never know. But Norma--even though this doesn't seem the time or the place, let me be the first to congratulate you on your new position--my old friend Theodore's daughter, and the last of the Melroses!"

At seven o'clock in the morning Norma, exhausted with excitement and emotion, took a hot bath, and finding things unchanged in the sick-room, except that the lights had been extinguished, and the winter daylight was drearily mingling with firelight, went on downstairs for coffee and for one more conference with the blinking nurses and the tired old doctor. She found herself too shaken to eat, but the hot drink was wonderfully soothing and stimulating, and for the first time, as she stood looking out into the street from the dining-room window, a sense of power and pride began to thrill her. Old people must die, of course, and after this sad and dark scene was over--then what? Then what? Then she would be in Leslie's long-envied place, the heiress, the important figure among all the changes that followed.

"If you please, Mrs. Sheridan----!" It was Joseph, haggard and white, who had come softly behind her to interrupt her thoughts. She glanced with quick apprehension toward the hall stairway. There had been a change----?

"No, it was the telephone, Miss." Norma, puzzled by the old butler's stricken air, went to the instrument. It was Miss Slater.

"Norma," Miss Slater said, agitatedly, "is Mr. Liggett--there?"

"I think he's with Aunt Annie, upstairs, but he's going home about eight," Norma answered. "There is no change. Is Aunt Alice awake? Mr. Liggett wanted to be there when she woke!"

"No--she's not awake," the other woman's voice said, solemnly. "She went to sleep like a child last night, Norma. But about half an hour ago I went in--she hadn't called me--it was just instinct, I suppose! She was lying--hadn't changed her position even----"

"_What's that!_" Norma cried, in a whisper that was like a scream. The grave voice and the sudden break of tears chilled her to the soul.

"We've had Doctor Merrill here," Miss Slater said. "Norma, you'll have to tell him--God help us all! She's gone!" _

Read next: Chapter 31

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