The Beloved Woman Part 42

"It's all over, Wolf, that Melrose business--that dream! I've said good-bye to them, and they have to me, and they know I'm never coming back! I'm a Sheridan now--really and truly--for ever."

And in the lonesome and bitter days in which his great dream had come true, without Norma to share it, days in which he had been thinking of her as affiliated more and more with the element he despised, identified more and more with the man who had wrecked--or tried to wreck--her life, Wolf had imagined this meeting, and imagined her as tentatively holding out the olive branch of peace; and he had had time to formulate exactly what he should answer to such an appeal.

"I'm sorry, Norma," he had imagined himself saying. "I'm terribly sorry!

But just talking doesn't undo these things, just _saying_ that you didn't mean it, and that it's all over. No, married life can't be picked up and put down again like a coat. You _were_ my wife, and G.o.d knows I worshipped you--heart and soul! If some day these people get tired of you, or you get tired of them, that'll be different! But you've cut me too deep--you've killed a part of me, and it won't come alive again!

I've been through h.e.l.l--wondering what you were doing, what you were going to do! I never should have married you; now let's call it all quits, and get out of it the best way we can!"

But when he saw her, the familiar, lovely face that he had loved for so many years, when he felt the little gloved hand on his arm, and realized that somehow, out of the utter desolation and loneliness of the big city, she had come to him again, that she was here, mistily smiling at him, and he could touch her and hear her voice, everything else vanished, as if it had never been, and he put his big arm about her hungrily, and kissed her, and they were both in tears.

"Oh, Wolf----!" Norma faltered, the dry s.p.a.ces of her soul flooding with springtime warmth and greenness, and a great happiness sweeping away all consciousness of the place in which they stood, and the interested eyes about them. "Oh, Wolf----!" She thought that she added, "Would you have gone away without me!" but as a matter of fact words were not needed now.

"Nono--you _do_ love me?" he whispered. Or perhaps he only thought he enunciated the phrase, for although Norma answered, it was not audibly.

Neither of them ever remembered anything coherent of that first five minutes, in which momentous questions were settled between Norma's admiring comment upon Wolf's new coat, and in which they laughed and cried and clung together in shameless indifference to the general public.

But presently they were calm enough to talk, and Wolf's first constructive remark, not even now very steady or clear, was that he must put off his going, get hold of Voorhies somehow----

But no, Norma said, even while they were dashing toward the telegraph office. She had already bought her ticket; she was going, too--to-night--this very hour----!

Wolf brought her up short, ecstatic bewilderment in his face.

"But your trunks----?"

"Regina--I tell you it's all settled--Regina sends them on after me. And I've got a new big suit-case, and my old brown one, that's plenty for the present! They're checked here, in the parcel-room----"

"But we'll----" They had started automatically to rush toward the parcel-room, but now he brought her up short again. "It's five-thirty now," he muttered, turning briskly in still another direction, "let me have your ticket, we'll have to try for a section--it's pretty late, but there may be cancellations!"

"Oh, but see, Wolf----! I've been here since half-past four. I've got the A drawing-room in Car 131----" She brought forth an official-looking envelope, and flashed a flimsy bit of coloured paper. For a third time Wolf checked his hurried rushing, and they both broke into delicious laughter. "I've been at it all day, with Aunt Kate," Norma said, proudly. "I've been to banks and to Judge Lee's office, and I've seen Annie and Leslie, and I bought a new wrapper and a suit-case, and--oh, and I saw Kitty Barry, and I got you a book for the train, and I got myself one----"

"Oh, Norma," Wolf said, his eyes filling, "you G.o.d-blessed little adorable idiot, do you know how I love you? My darling--my own wife, do you know that I want to die, to-night, I'm so happy! Do you realize what it's going to mean to us, poking about Chicago, and sending home little presents to Rose and the kids, and reaching San Francisco, and going up to the big mine? Do you realize that I feel like a man out of jail--like a kid who knows it's Sat.u.r.day morning?"

"Well--I feel that way, too!" Norma smiled. "And now," she added, in a businesslike tone, "we've got to look for Aunt Kate and Rose, and get our bags; and Leslie said to-day that it was a good idea to wire a Chicago hotel for a room, just for the few hours before the Overland pulls out, because one feels so dirty and tired; do you realize that I've never spent a night on a Pullman yet?"

"And I'll turn in the ticket for my lower," Wolf said; "we'll have dinner on board, so that's all right----"

"Oh, Wolf, and won't that be fun?" Norma exulted. And then, joyously: "Oh, there they are!"

And she fled across the great s.p.a.ce to meet Rose, pretty and matronly, at the foot of the great stairway, and Harry grinning and proud, with his little st.u.r.dy white-caped boy in his arms, and Aunt Kate beaming utter happiness upon them all. And then ensued that thrilling time of incoherencies and confusions, laughter and tears, to which the big place is, by nature, dedicated. They were parting so lightly, but they all knew that there would be changes before they six met again. To Aunt Kate, holding close the child whose destinies had been so strangely entangled with her own, the moment held a poignant pleasure as well as pain. She was launched now, their imperious, beloved youngest; she had been taken to the mountain-tops, and shown the world at her feet, and she had chosen bravely and wisely, chosen her part of service and simplicity and love. Life would go on, changes indeed and growth everywhere, but she knew that the years would bring her back a new Norma--a developed, sweetened, self-reliant woman--and a new Wolf, his hard childhood all swept away and forgotten in the richness and beauty of this woman's love and companionship. And she was content.

"And, Wolf--she told you about Kitty! Every month, as long as they need it," Rose said, crying heartily, as she clung to her brother. "Why, it's the most wonderful thing I ever heard! Poor Louis Barry can't believe it--he broke down completely! And Kitty was crying, and kissing the children, and she knelt down, and put her arms about Norma's knees; and Norma was crying, too--you never saw anything like it!"

"She never told me a word about it," Wolf said, trying to laugh, and blinking, as he looked at her, a few feet away. One of her arms was about his mother, her hand was in Harry's, her face close to the rosy baby's face.

"Wolf," his sister said, earnestly, drying her eyes, "it will bring a blessing on your own children----!"

"Ah, Rose!" he answered, quickly. "Pray that there is one, some day--one of our own as sweet as yours are!"

"Ah, you'll have everything, you two, never fear!" she said, radiantly.

And then a gate opened, and the bustle about them thickened, and laughing faces grew pale, and last words faltered.

Harry gave Rose the baby, and put his arm about Rose's mother, and they watched them go, the red-cap leading with the suit-cases, Wolf carrying another, Norma on his arm, twisting herself about, at the very last second, to smile an April smile over her shoulder, and wave the green jade handle of her slim little umbrella. There was just a glimpse of Wolf's old boyish, proud, protecting smile, and then his head drooped toward his companion, and the surging crowd shut them out of sight.

Then Rose immediately was concerned for the little baby. Wouldn't it be wiser to go straight home, just for fear that Mrs. Noon might have fallen asleep--and the house caught on fire----? Mrs. Sheridan blew her nose and dried her eyes, and straightened her widow's bonnet, and cleared her throat, and agreed that it would. And they all went away.

But there was another watcher who had shared, unseen, all this last half-hour, and who stood immovable to the last second, until the iron gates had actually clashed shut. It was a well-built, keen-eyed man, in an irreproachably fitting fur-collared overcoat, who finally turned away, fitting his eyegla.s.ses, on their black ribbon, firmly upon the bridge of his nose, and sighing just a little as he went back to the sidewalk, and climbed into a waiting roadster.

Even after he took his seat at the wheel, he made no effort to start the car, but sat slowly drawing on his heavy gloves, and staring abstractedly at the dull, uninteresting stretch of street before him, where a dismal spring wind was stirring chaff and papers about the subway entrance, and surface cars were grinding and ringing on the curve.

It looked dull and empty--dull and empty, he thought. She had been very happy, looking up at her man, kissing her people good-bye. She was a remarkable woman, Norma.

"A remarkable woman--Norma," he said, half-aloud. "She will make him a wonderful wife; she will help him to go a long way. And she never would have had patience for formal living; it wasn't in her!"

But he remembered what was in her, what eager gaiety, what hunger for new impressions, what courage in seizing her dilemmas the instant she saw them. He remembered the flash of her eyes, and the curve of her proud little mouth.

"Theodore had more charm than any of them," he said, "and she is like him. Well--perhaps I'll meet somebody like her, some day, and the story will have a different ending!"

But he knew in his heart that there was n.o.body like her, and that she had gone out of his life for ever.

They had hung the belted brown coat over the big new gray one in the drawing-room, and Norma had brushed her hair, and Wolf had shoved the suit-cases under the seats, and they had gone straight into the dining-car, and were at a lighted little shining table by this time.

Wolf had had no lunch; Norma was, she said, starving. They ordered their meal just as the train drew out of the underground arcades and swept over the city, in the twilight of the dull, sunless day.

Norma looked down, and joy and a vague heartache struggled within her.

The little city blocks, draped with their frail tangles of fire-escapes, were as clean-cut as toys. In the streets children were screaming and racing, at the doorways women loitered and talked. Great trucks lumbered in and out among surging pedestrians, and women and children stood before the green-grocers' displays of oranges and cabbages, and trickled in and out of the markets, where cheap cuts were advertised in great chalk signs on the windows. Red brick, yellow brick, gray cement, the streets fled by; the dear, familiar streets that she and Wolf, and she and Rose, had tramped and explored, in the burning dry heat of July, in the flutter of November's first snows.

"Say good-bye to it, Wolf; it will be a long time before we see New York again!"

Wolf looked down, grinning. Then, as they left the city, and the dusk deepened, his eyes went toward the river, went toward the vague and waiting West. The Palisades lay, a wide bar of soft dull gray, against the paler dove-colour of the sky. Above them, bare trees were etched sharply, and beneath them was the satiny surface of the full Hudson.

It was still water, and the river was smooth enough to give back a clear reflection of the buildings and the wharves on the opposite sh.o.r.e, and the floating ice from the north looked like rounded bunches of foam arrested on the shining waters.

Suddenly the sinking sun evaded the smother of cloud, and flashed out red and shining, for only a few brilliant minutes. It caught window gla.s.s like flame, twinkled and smouldered in the mirror of the river, and lighted the under edges of low clouds with a crisp touch of apricot and pink. Wet streets shone joyously, doves rose in a circling whirl from a near-by roof, and all the world shone and sparkled in the last breath of the spring day. Then dusk came indeed, and the villages across the river were strung with increasing lights, and in the tender opal softness of the evening sky Norma saw a great star hanging.

"That's a good omen--that's our own little star!" she said softly to herself. She looked up to see Wolf smiling at her, and the smile in her own eyes deepened, and she stretched a warm and comradely hand to him across the little table.

THE END