Part 28 (1/2)

He had always loved her as a big brother, had even experienced a definite heartache when she grew up and went away, a lovely and unattainable girl in the place where their old giddy dear little Norma had been.

But now his pa.s.sion for his young wife was becoming a devouring fire in Wolf's heart; she absorbed him and possessed him like a madness. A dozen times a day he would take from his pocket-book the thin leather case she had given him, holding on one side a photograph of the three heads of Rose, his mother, and the baby, and on the other an enchanting shadow of the loosened soft hair and the serious profile that was Norma.

And as he stood looking at it, with the machinery roaring about him, and the sunlight beating in through steel-barred windows sixty feet high, in all the confusion of shavings and oil-soaked wood, polished sliding shafts streaked with thick blue grease, stifling odours of creosote and oily ”wipes”, Wolf's eyes would fill with tears and he would shake his head at his own emotion, and try to laugh it away.

After awhile he took another little picture of her, this one taken under a taut parasol in bright sunlight, and fitted it over the opposite faces; and then when he had studied one picture he could turn to the other, and perhaps go back to the first before his eyes were satisfied.

And if during the day some thought brought her suddenly to mind, he would stop short in whatever he was doing, and remember her little timid upglancing look as she hazarded, at breakfast, some question about his work, or remember her enthusiasm, on a country tramp, for the chance meal at some wayside restaurant, and sheer love of her would overwhelm him, and he would find his eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g again.

CHAPTER XXVI

So the summer fled, and before she fairly realized it Norma saw the leaves colouring behind the little house like a wall of fire, and rustled them with her feet when she tramped with Wolf's big collie into the woods. The air grew clearer and thinner, sunset came too soon, and a delicate beading of dew loitered on the shady side of the house until almost noon.

One October day, when she had been six months a wife, Norma made her first call upon Annie von Behrens. Alice she had seen several times, when she had stopped in, late in the summer mornings, to entertain the invalid with her first adventures in housekeeping, and chat with Miss Slater. But Chris she had quite deliberately avoided. He had written her from Canada a brief and charming note, which she had shown Wolf, and he and Alice had had their share in the general family gift of silver, the crates and bags and boxes of spoons and bowls and teapots that had antic.i.p.ated every possible table need of the Sheridans for generations to come. But that was all; she had not seen Chris, and did not want to see him.

”The whole thing is rather like a sickness, in my mind,” she told Wolf, ”and I don't want to see him any more than you would a doctor or a nurse that was a.s.sociated with illness. I don't know what we--what I was thinking about!”

”But you think he really--loved you--Nono?”

”Well--or he thought he did!”

”And did you like him terribly?”

”I think I thought I did, too. It was--of course it was something we couldn't very well discuss----.”

”Well, I'm sorry for him.” Wolf had dismissed him easily. On her part, Norma was conscious of no particular emotion when she thought of Chris.

The suddenness and violence with which she had broken that a.s.sociation and made its resumption for ever impossible, had carried her safely into a totally different life. Her marriage, her new husband and new home, her new t.i.tle indeed, made her seem another woman, and if she thought of Chris at all it was to imagine what he would think of these changes, and to fancy what he would say of them, when they met. No purely visionary meeting can hold the element of pa.s.sion, and so it was a remote and spiritualized Chris of whom Norma came to think, far removed from the actual man of flesh and blood.

Her call upon Annie she made with a mental reserve of cheerful explanation and apology ready for Annie's first reproach. Norma never could quite forget the extraordinary relations.h.i.+p in which she stood to Annie; and, perhaps half consciously, was influenced by the belief that some day the brilliant and wonderful Mrs. von Behrens would come to know of it, too.

But Annie, who happened to be at home, and had other callers, rapidly dashed Norma's vague and romantic antic.i.p.ations by showing her only the brisk and aloof cordiality with which she held at bay nine tenths of her acquaintance. Annie's old butler showed Norma impa.s.sively to the little drawing-room that was tucked in beyond the big one; two or three strangers eyed the newcomer cautiously, and Annie merely accorded her a perfunctory welcome. They were having tea.

”Well, how do you do? How very nice of you, Norma. Do you know Mrs.

Theodore Thayer, and Mrs. Thayer, and Miss Bishop? Katrina, this is--the name is still Sheridan, isn't it, Norma?--this is Mrs. Sheridan, who was with Mama and Leslie last summer. You have lots of sugar and cream, Norma, of course--all youngsters do. And you're near the toast----” And Annie, dismissing her, leaned back in her chair, and dropped her voice to the undertone that Norma had evidently interrupted. ”Do go on, Leila,” she said, to the older of the three women, ”that's quite delicious! I heard something of it, but I knew of course that there was more----”

A highly flavoured little scandal was in process of construction. Norma knew the princ.i.p.als slightly; the divorced woman, and the second husband from whom she had borrowed money to loan the first. She could join in the laughter that broke out presently, while she tried to identify her companions. The younger Mrs. Thayer had been the Miss Katrina Davenport of last month's brilliant wedding. Pictures of her had filled the ill.u.s.trated weeklies, and all the world knew that she and her husband were preparing to leave for a wonderful home in Hawaii, where the family sugar interests were based. They were to cross the continent, Norma knew, in the Davenport private car, to be elaborately entertained in San Francisco, and to be prominent, naturally, in the island set. Little Miss Bishop had just announced her engagement to Lord Donnyfare, a splendid, big, clumsy, and impecunious young Briton who had made himself very popular with the younger group this winter. They were to be married in January and her ladys.h.i.+p would shortly afterward be transferred to London society, presented at court, and placed as mistress over the old family acres in Devons.h.i.+re.

They were both nice girls, pretty, beautifully groomed and dressed, and far from unintelligent as they discussed their plans; how their favourite horses and dogs would be moved, and what instructions had been given the maids who had preceded them to their respective homes. Katrina Thayer was just twenty, Mary Bishop a year younger; Norma knew that the former was perhaps the richest girl in America, and the latter was also an heiress, the society papers having already hinted that among the wedding gifts shortly to be displayed would be an uncle's casual check for one million dollars.

”And of course it'll be charming for Chris, Mary,” Annie presently said, ”if he's really sent to Saint James's.”

Norma felt her throat thicken.

”Chris--to England--as Amba.s.sador?” she said.

”Well, there's just a possibility--no, there's more than that!” Annie told her. ”I believe he'll take it, if it is offered. Of course, he's supremely well fitted for it. There's even”--Annie threw out to the company at large, with that air of being specially informed in which she delighted--”there's even very good reason to suppose that influence has been brought to bear by----But I don't dare go into that. However, we feel that it will be offered. And the one serious drawback is naturally my sister. Alice--poor child! And yet, of us all, Alice is most desperately eager for Chris to take it.”