Part 29 (1/2)

CHAPTER XXVII

The bitterness stayed with her, and gradually robbed her life of everything that was happy and content. Her little household round, that had been so absorbing and so important, became tedious and stupid. Rose, who was expecting her second confinement, had her husband's mother with her, and in care of the old baby, and making preparations for the new, was busy, and had small time for the old companions.h.i.+p; the evenings were too cold for motoring now, even if Wolf had not been completely buried in engineering journals and papers of all sorts.

Norma did not call on Annie again, but a fretted and outraged sense of Annie's coolness and aloofness, and a somewhat similar impression from Leslie's manner, when they met in Fifth Avenue one day, was always in her mind. They could drop her as easily as they had picked her up, these high-and-mighty Melroses! She consoled herself, for a few days, with spectacular fancies of Annie's consternation should Norma's real ident.i.ty be suddenly revealed to her, but even that poor solace was taken away from her at last.

It was Aunt Kate's unconscious hand that struck the blow, on a wild afternoon, All Hallow E'en, as it happened, when the older woman made the long trip to see Rose, and came on to Norma with a report that everything was going well, and Miggs more fascinating than ever.

Mrs. Sheridan found Norma at the close of the short afternoon, moping in her unlighted house. She had been to the theatre with Wolf and a young couple from the house next door, last night, and had fallen asleep after an afternoon walk, and felt headachy, p.r.i.c.kly with heat and cold, and stupid. Yawning and chilly, she kissed her aunt, and suggested that they move to the kitchen. It was Inga's free night and Norma was cook.

”You'll stay and surprise Wolf, he'd love it,” Norma said, as the visitor's approving eyes noted the general order and warmth, the blue-checked towels and blue bowls, the white table and white walls. The little harum-scarum baby of the family was proceeding to get her husband a most satisfactory and delicious little dinner, and Aunt Kate was proud of her.

”Did you make that cake, darling?”

”Indeed I did; she can't make cake!”

”And the ham?”

”Well”--Norma eyed the cut ham fondly--”we did that together, out of the book! And I wish you'd taste it, Aunt Kate, it is perfectly delicious. I give it to Wolf every other night, but I think he'd eat it three times a day and be delighted. And last week we made bread--awfully good, too--not hard like that bread we made last summer. Rolls, we made--cinnamon rolls and plain. Harry and Rose were here. And Thanksgiving I'm going to try mincemeat.”

”You're a born cook,” Aunt Kate said, paying one of her highest compliments with due gravity. But Norma did not respond with her usual buoyancy. She sighed impatiently, and her face fell into lines of discontent and sadness that did not escape the watching eyes. Mrs.

Sheridan changed the subject to the one of a cousin of Harry Redding, one Mrs. Barry with whose problems Norma was already dismally familiar.

Mrs. Barry's husband was sick in a hospital, and she herself had to have an expensive operation, and the smallest of the four children had some trouble hideously like infantile paralysis.

Norma knew that Aunt Kate would have liked to have her offer to take at least one of the small and troublesome children for two or three days, if not to stay with the unfortunate Kitty Barry outright. She knew that there was almost no money, that all the household details of was.h.i.+ng and cooking were piling up like a mountain about the ailing woman, but her heart was filled with sudden rebellion and impatience with the whole miserable scheme.

”My goodness, Aunt Kate, if it isn't one thing with those people it's another!” she said, impatiently. ”I suppose you were there, and up with that baby all night!”

”Indeed I got some fine sleep,” Mrs. Sheridan answered, innocently.

”Poor things, they're very brave!”

Norma said nothing, but her expression was not sympathetic. She had been thinking of herself as to be pitied, and this ruthless introduction of the Barry question entirely upset the argument. If Mary Bishop and Katrina Thayer were the standard, then Norma Sheridan's life was too utterly obscure and insignificant to be worth living. But of course if incompetent strugglers like the Barrys were to be brought into the question, then Norma might begin to feel the solid ground melting from beneath her feet.

She did not offer the cake or the ham to Aunt Kate, as contributions toward the small Barrys' lunch next day, nor did she invite any one of them to visit her. Her aunt, if she noted these omissions, made no comment upon them.

”I declare you are getting to be a real woman, Norma,” she said.

”I suppose everyone grows up,” Norma a.s.sented, cheerlessly.

”Yes, there's a time when a child stops being a baby and you see that it's beginning to be a little girl,” Mrs. Sheridan mused; ”but it's some time later before you know _what sort_ of a little girl it is. And then at--say fifteen or sixteen--you see the change again, the little girl growing into a grown girl--a young lady. And for awhile you sort of lose track of her again, until all of a sudden you say: 'Well, Norma's going to be sociable--and like people!' or: 'Rose is going to be a gentle, shy girl----'”

Norma knew the mildly moralizing tone, and that she was getting a sermon.

”You never knew that I was going to be a good housekeeper!” she a.s.serted, inclined toward contrariety.

”I think you're going through another change now, Baby,” her aunt said.

”You've become a woman too fast. You don't quite know where you are!”

This was so unexpectedly acute that Norma was inwardly surprised, and a little impressed. She sat down at one end of the clean little kitchen table, and rested her face in her hands, and looked resentfully at the older woman.