The Beloved Woman Part 21

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 att.i.tudes 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 pa.s.sengers, 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 "Ma.r.s.eillaise."

Suddenly, and almost without volition, the girl s.n.a.t.c.hed 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?...

h.e.l.lo--h.e.l.lo--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 ta.s.sel of the old-fas.h.i.+oned shade in her cold fingers, and staring with haggard eyes into s.p.a.ce.

CHAPTER XX

More than a week later Annie gave a luncheon to a dozen women, and telephoned Norma beforehand, with a request that the girl come early enough to help her with name cards.

"These d.a.m.nable engagement luncheons," said Aunt Annie, limping about the long table, and grumbling at everything as she went. Annie had wrenched her ankle in alighting from her car, and was cross with nagging pain. "Here, put Natalie next to Leslie, Norma; no, that puts the Gunnings together. I'll give you Miss Blanchard--but you don't speak French! Here, give me your pencil--and confound these things anyway----Fowler," she said to the butler, "I don't like to see a thing like that on the table--carry that away, please; and here, get somebody to help you change this, that won't do! That's all right--only I want this as you had it day before yesterday--and don't use those, get the gla.s.s ones----"

And so fussing and changing and criticizing, Annie went away, and Norma followed her up to her bedroom.

"I'm wondering when we're going to give _you_ an engagement luncheon, Norma," said the hostess, in a whirl of rapid dressing. "Who's ahead now?"

"Oh--n.o.body!" Norma answered, with a mirthless laugh. She had been listless and pale for several days, and did not seem herself at all.

"Forrest Duer, is it?"

"Oh, good heavens--Aunt Annie! He's twenty-one!"

"Is that all--he's such a big whale!----Don't touch my hair, Phoebe, it'll do very well!" said Annie to the maid. "Well, don't be in too much of a hurry, Norma," she went on kindly. "Nothing like being sure!

That"--Annie glanced at the retiring maid--"that's what makes me nervous about Leslie," she confessed. "I'm afraid we hurried the child into it just a little bit. It was an understood thing since they were nothing but kiddies."

"Leslie is outrageously spoiled," Norma said, not unkindly.

"Leslie? Oh, horribly. Mama always spoils everyone and poor Theodore spoiled her, too," Annie conceded.