The Beloved Woman Part 32

"Where's Mother?"

"Gone downstairs to see how the Noon baby is."

"Norma," said Wolf, without preamble, "did you see Chris Liggett to-day?"

Her colour flamed high, but her eyes did not waver.

"Yes. We met at Sherry's. We had lunch together."

"You didn't meet by accident?" There was desperate hope in Wolf's voice.

But Norma would not lie. With her simple negative her head drooped, and she looked at her locked fingers in silence.

Wolf was silent, too, for a long minute. Then he cleared his throat, and spoke quietly and sensibly.

"I've been a long time waking up, Nono," he said. "I'm sorry! Of course I knew that there was a difference; I knew that you--felt differently.

And I guessed that it was Chris. Norma, do you--do you still like him?"

She looked up wretchedly, nodding her head.

"More"--he began, and stopped--"more than you do me?" he asked. And in the silence he added suddenly: "Norma, I thought we were so happy!"

Then the tears came.

"Wolf, I'll never love any one more than I do you!" the girl said, pa.s.sionately. "You've always been an angel to me--always the best friend I ever had. I know you--I know what you are to Rose, Aunt Kate, and what the men at the factory think of you. I'm not fit to tie your shoes! I'm wicked, and selfish, and--and everything I oughtn't to be! But I can't help it. I've wanted you to know--all there was to know. I've met him, and we've talked and walked together; that's all. And that's all we want--just to be friends. I'm sorry----" Her voice trailed off on a sob.

"I'm awfully sorry!" she said.

"Yes," Wolf said, slowly, after a pause, "I'm sorry, too!"

He sat down, rumpling his hair, frowning. Norma, watching him fearfully, noticed that he was very pale.

"I thought we were so happy," he said again, simply.

"Ah, Wolf, don't think I've been fooling all this summer!" his wife pleaded, her eyes filling afresh. "I've loved it all--the peach ice-cream, and the picnics, and everything. But--but people can't help this sort of thing, can they? It does happen, and--and they just simply have to make the best of it, don't they? If--if we go to California next month--you know that I'll do everything I can----!"

He was not listening to her.

"Norma," he interrupted, sharply, "if Liggett's wife was out of the way--would you want to marry him?"

"Wolf!--what's the use of asking that? You only--you only excite us both. Aunt Alice _isn't_ out of the way, and even if she were, I am your wife. I'm sorry. I'll never meet him again--I haven't been a bit happy about it. I'll promise you that I will not see him again."

"I don't ask you for that promise," Wolf said. "I don't know what we can do! I never should have let you--I shouldn't have been such a fool as to--but somehow, I'd always dreamed that you and I would marry.

Well!"--he interrupted his musing with resolute cheerfulness--"I've got to get over to the library to-night," he said, "for I may have to start for Phily to-morrow afternoon. Will you tell Mother----"

Norma immediately protested that she was going with him, but he patiently declined, kissing her in a matter-of-fact sort of way as he pulled on the old overcoat and the new gloves, and slamming the hall door behind him when he went.

For a minute she stood looking after him, with a great heartache almost blinding her. Then she flashed to her room, and before Wolf had reached the corner his wife had slipped her hand into his arm, and her little double step was keeping pace with his long stride in the way they both loved.

She talked to him in her usual manner, and presently he could answer normally, and they bought peppermints to soften their literary labours.

In the big library Wolf was instantly absorbed, but for awhile Norma sat watching the shabby, interested, intelligent men and women who came and went, the shabby books that crossed the counters, the pretty, efficient desk-clerks under their green droplights. The radiators clanked and hissed softly in the intervals of silence, sometimes there was whispering at the shelves, or one of the attendants spoke in a low tone.

Norma loved the atmosphere, so typical a phase of the great city's life. After awhile she idly dragged toward her three books, from a table, and idly dipped into them: "The Life of the Grimkes"; "The Life of Elizabeth Prentiss"; "The Letters of Charles d.i.c.kens."

Nine struck; ten; eleven. Wolf had some six or seven large books about him, and alternated his plunges into them with animated whispered conversations with a silver-headed old man, two hours ago an utter stranger, but always henceforth to be affectionately quoted by Wolf as a friend.

They indulged in the extravagance of a taxi-cab for the home trip. Norma left Wolf still reading, after winning from him a kiss and a promise not to "worry", and went to bed and to sleep. When she wakened, after some nine delicious hours, he was gone; gone to Philadelphia, as it proved.

Breakfasting at ten o'clock, in a flood of sweet winter suns.h.i.+ne, she put a brave face on the matter. She told herself that it was better that Wolf should know, and only the part of true kindness not to deny what, for good or ill, was true. The memory of his grave and troubled face distressed her, but she reminded herself that he would be back on Sat.u.r.day, and then he would have forgiven her. She would see Chris to-day, to-morrow, and the day after, and by that time they would have said everything that there was to say, and they would never see each other again.

For it was a favourite hallucination of theirs that every meeting was to be the last. Not, said Chris, that there was any harm in it, but it was wiser not to see each other. And when Norma, glowing under his eyes, would echo this feeling, he praised her for her courage as if they had resisted the temptation already.

"I've thought it all over, Chris," she would say, "and I know that the wisest way is to stop. And you must help me." And when Chris answered, "Norma, I don't see where you get that marvellous courage of yours," it did not occur to Norma to question in what way she was showing courage at all. She lived upon his praise, and could not have enough of it. He never tired of telling her that she was beautiful, good, brave, a constant inspiration, and far above the ordinary type of woman; and Norma believed him.

On the day before Wolf's first week-end return from Philadelphia, Chris was very grave. When he and Norma were halfway through their luncheon, in the quiet angle of an old-fas.h.i.+oned restaurant, he told her why.

Alice was failing. Specialists had told him that England was out of the question. She might live a year, but the probability was against it.

They--he and Norma--Chris said, must consider this, now.

Norma considered it with a paling face. It--it couldn't make any difference, she said, quickly and nervously.

And then, for the first time, he talked to her of her responsibility in the matter, of what their love meant to them both. Wolf had his claim, true; but what was truly the generous thing for a woman to do toward a man she did not love? Wasn't a year or two of hurt feelings, even anger and resentment, better than a loveless marriage that might last fifty years?

This was a terrible problem, and Norma did not know what to think. On the one hand was the certainty of that higher life from which she had been exiled since her marriage: the music, the art, the letters, the cultivated voices and fragrant rooms, the wealth and luxury, the devotion of this remarkable and charming man, whose simple friends.h.i.+p had been beyond her dreams a few years ago. On the other side was the painful and indeed shameful desertion of Wolf, the rupture with Aunt Kate and Rose, and the undying sense in her own soul of an unworthy action.

But Rose was absorbed in Harry and the children, and Aunt Kate would surely go with Wolf to California, three thousand miles away----

"I am not brave enough!" she whispered.

"You _are_ brave enough," Chris answered, quickly. "Tell him the truth--as you did on your wedding day. Tell him you acted on a mad impulse, and that you are sorry. A few days' discomfort, and you are free, and one week of happiness will blot out the whole wretched memory for ever."

"It is not wretchedness, Chris," she corrected, with a rueful smile. But she did not contradict him, and before they parted she promised him that she would not go to California without at least telling Wolf how she felt about it.

Rose and Harry joined them for the Sat.u.r.day night reunion. Norma thought that Wolf seemed moody, and was unresponsive to her generous welcome, and she was conscious of watching him somewhat apprehensively as the evening wore on. But it was Sunday afternoon before the storm broke.

Wolf was at church when Norma wakened, and as she dressed she meditated a trifle uneasily over this departure from their usual comfortable Sunday morning habit. She breakfasted alone, Wolf and his mother coming in for their belated coffee just as Norma, prettily coated and hatted and furred, was leaving the house for the ten-o'clock Ma.s.s. They did not meet again until luncheon, and as Wolf had explained that he must leave at four o'clock for Philadelphia, Norma began to think that this particular visit would end without any definite unpleasantness.

However, at about three o'clock, he invited her to walk with him to the station, and join his mother later, at Rose's house, in New Jersey, and Norma dared not refuse. They locked the apartment, and walked slowly down Broadway, as they had walked so many thousand times before, in the streaming Sunday crowds. Before they had gone a block Wolf opened hostilities by asking abruptly:

"Where did you go to church this morning?"

Norma flushed, and laughed a little.

"I went down to the Cathedral; I'm fond of it, you know. Why?"

"Did you meet Chris Liggett?" Wolf asked.

"Yes--I did, Wolf. He goes to the church near there, now and then."

"When you telephone him to," Wolf said, grimly.