The Beloved Woman Part 33

Norma began to feel frightened. She had never heard this tone from Wolf before.

"I did telephone him, as a matter of fact--or rather he happened to telephone me, and I said I was going there. Is there anything so horrifying in that?" she asked.

"Just after you went out, the telephone operator asked me if the Murray Hill number had gotten us," Wolf answered; "that's how I happen to know."

Norma was angry, ashamed, and afraid, all at once. For twenty feet they walked in silence. She stole more than one anxious look at her companion; Wolf's face was set like flint. He was b.u.t.toned into the familiar old overcoat, a tall, brown, clean-shaven, and just now scowling young man of the accepted American type, firm of jaw, keen of eye, and with a somewhat homely bluntness of feature preventing him from being describable as handsome, or with at best a rough, hard, open-eyed sort of handsomeness that was as unconscious of itself as the beauty of a young animal.

"Wolf, don't be cross," his wife pleaded, in illogical coaxing.

"I'm not cross," he said, with an annoyed glance that humiliated and angered her. "But I don't like this sort of thing, Norma, and I should think you'd know why."

"What sort of thing?" Norma countered, quickly.

"The sort of thing that evidently Mr. Christopher Liggett thinks is fair play!" Wolf said, with youthful bitterness. "Harry saw you both walking up Fifth Avenue yesterday, and Joe Anderson happened to mention that you and a man were lunching together on Thursday, down at the Lafayette.

There may be no harm in it----"

"There _may_ be!" Norma echoed, firing. "You know very well there _isn't_!"

"You see him every day," Wolf said.

"I _don't_ see him every day! But if I did, it wouldn't be Harry Redding's and Joe Anderson's business!"

"No," Wolf said, more mildly, "but it might be mine!"

Norma realized that he was softening under her distress, and she changed her tone.

"Wolf, you know that you can trust me!" she said.

"But I don't know anything about him!" Wolf reminded her. "I know that he's twice your age----"

"He's thirty-eight!"

"Thirty-eight, then--and I know that he's a loafer--a rich man who has nothing else to do but run around with women----"

"I want to ask you to stop talking about something of which you are entirely ignorant!" Norma interrupted, hotly.

"You're the one that's ignorant, Norma," Wolf said, stubbornly, not looking at her. "You are only a little girl; you think it's great fun to be married to one man, and flirting with another! What makes me sick is that a man like Liggett thinks he can get away with it, and you women----"

"If you say that again, I'll not walk with you!" Norma burst in furiously.

"Does it ever occur to you," Wolf asked, equally roused, "that you are my wife?"

"Yes!" Norma answered, breathlessly. "Yes--it does! And why? Because I was afraid I was beginning to care too much for Chris Liggett--because I knew he loved me, he had told me so!--and I went to you because I wanted to be safe--and I told you so, too, Wolf Sheridan, the very day that we were married! I never lied to you! I told you I loved Chris, that I always had! And if you'd been _civil_ to me," rushed on Norma, beginning to feel tears mastering her, "if you'd been _decent_ to me, I would have gotten over it. I would never have seen him again anyway, after this week, for I told him this morning that I didn't want to go on meeting him--that it wasn't fair to you! But no, you don't trust me and you don't believe me, and consequently--consequently, I don't care what I do, and I'll make you sorry----"

"Don't talk so wildly, Norma," Wolf warned her, in a tone suddenly quiet and sad. "Please don't--people will notice you!"

"I don't care if they do!" Norma said. But she glanced about deserted Eighth Avenue uneasily none the less, and furtively dried her eyes upon a flimsy little transparent handkerchief that somehow tore at her husband's heart. "If you had been a little patient, Wolf----" she pleaded, reproachfully.

"There are times when a man hasn't much use for patience, Norma," Wolf said, still with strange gentleness. "You _did_ tell me of liking Liggett--but I thought--I hoped, I guess----!" He paused, and then went on with sudden fierceness: "He's married, Norma, and you're married--I wish there was some way of letting you out of it, as far as I am concerned! Of course you don't have to go to California with me--if that helps. You can get your freedom, easily enough, after awhile. But as long as he's tied, it doesn't seem to me that he has any business----"

His gentle tone disarmed her, and she took up Chris's defence eagerly.

"Wolf, don't you believe there is such a thing as love? Just that two people find out that they belong to each other--whether it's right or wrong, or possible or impossible--and that it may last for ever?"

"No," said Wolf, harshly, "I don't believe it! He's married--doesn't he love his wife?"

"Well, of course he loves her! But this is the first time in all his life that he has--cared--this way!" Norma said.

Wolf made no answer, and she felt that she had scored. They were in the station now, and weaving their way down toward the big concourse. Norma took her husband's arm.

"Please--please--don't make scenes, Wolf! If you will just believe me that I wouldn't--truly I wouldn't!--hurt you and Aunt Kate for all the world----"

"Ah, Norma," he said, quickly, "I can't take my wife on those terms!"

And turning from the ticket window he added, sensibly: "Liggett is tied, of course. But would you like me to leave you here when I go West? Until you are surer of yourself--one way or another? You only have to say so!"

She only had to say so. He had reached, of his own accord, the very point to which she long had hoped to bring him. But perversely, Norma did not quite like to have Wolf go off to Philadelphia with this unpalatable affirmative ringing in his ears. She looked down. A moment's courage now, and she would win everything--and more than everything!--to which Chris had ever urged her. But she felt oddly sad and even hurt by his willingness to give her her way.

"All right!" he said, hastily. "That's understood. I'll tell Mother I don't want you to follow, for awhile. Good-bye, Norma! You're taking the next tube? Wait a minute--I want a _Post_----"

Was he trying to show her how mean he could be? she thought, as with a heartache, and a confused sense of wrong and distress, she slowly went upon her way. Of course that parting was just bravado, of course he felt more than that! She resented it--she thought he had been unnecessarily unkind----

But her spirits slowly settled themselves. Wolf knew what she felt, now, and they had really parted without bitterness. A pleasant sense of being her own mistress crept over her, her cheeks cooled, her fluttering heart came back to its normal beat. She began to hear herself telling Chris how courageous she had been.

It was too bad--it was one of the sad things of life. But after all, love was love, in spite of Wolf's scepticism, and if it soothed Wolf to be rude, let him have that consolation! What did a little pain more or less signify now? There was no going back. Years from now Wolf would forgive her, recognizing that great love was its own excuse for being.

"And if this sort of thing exists only to be crushed and killed," Norma wrote Chris a few days later, "then half the great pictures, the great novels, the great poems and dramas, the great operas, are lies. But you and I know that they are not lies!"

She was unhappy at home, for Aunt Kate was grave and silent, Rose wrapped in the all-absorbing question of the tiny Catherine's meals, and Wolf neither came nor wrote on Sat.u.r.day night. But in Chris's devotion she was feverishly and breathlessly happy, their meetings--always in public places, and without a visible evidence of their emotion--were hours of the most stimulating delight.

CHAPTER x.x.x

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.